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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



Digitized by the Internet Archive 
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The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/eventsmanbeingacOObarr 



THE EVENTS MAN 




Mr. Stanley Washburn aboard The Fawan 



THE EVENTS MAN 



Being an Account of the Adventures of 

Stanley Washburn, American War 

Correspondent 



BY 

RICHARD BARRY 

Author of ''Port Arthur,'' ''A Monster Heroism'' etc. 



NEW YORK 

MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY 

1907 



1^ 5, 



U3RARY of CONGRESS 
Two eopies Received 

APR 9 1907 

/, Copyright Entw 
CLASS /^ XXC, Nb, 



I \ 



Copyright, 1907, by 
MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY 

Published April, 1907 



THE PREMIER PRESS 
NEW YORK 



PREFACE 

THIS book is not fiction; it is not war 
correspondence; not history; not me- 
moir. There is here the portrait of a 
man painted on the background of a tale of 
romantic achievement. The man is Stanley 
Washburn, war correspondent, writer of cable 
news for a syndicate of the chief American 
dailies. The achievement was the operation 
of the Chicago Daily News dispatch boat 
Fawan through the months of March, 
April, May and June of 1904 during the 
Russo-Japanese war. Victor F. Lawson, pro- 
prietor and editor of the Daily News, stood 
behind the expedition with his papers, his 
money and his influence. Every statement 
of fact here is literally true, as it was made to 
the author during the summer of 1905, in a 
bean mill at General Nogi's headquarters on 
the borders of Mongolia. The chart in the 
back of the volume is reproduced from that 
used in the pilot house of The Fawan. 

R. B. 
Fakumen^ North China^ 

September 10, 1905. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

1. UNDER WAY 13 

In which, after being the object 
of all the sharks, touts and 
hea\chcombers on the China 
coast, succumbing to as few of 
them as my inexperience war- 
rants, I set out on a cruise 
around Robin Hood's barn, ac- 
companied by the Korean Prime 
Minister. 

11. A SCAB SKIPPER 29 

/ pass the worst day of my life 
— the two worst days in fact — 
and meet the fate which puts me 
■first behind a wheel. 

III. SERVING TIME 43 

/ find a lieutenant of worthy 
steel, go keel-down on a sand 
bar, run the boat's nose into a 
loaded collier and become duly 
surprised at a gold watch pre- 
sented by the Prime Minister. 



8 Contents. 

CHAPTER PAGE 

IV, THE DIPLOMAT WINS 6i 

We run afoul of the inefficiency 
of the British flag, are saved 
from the death of spies by the 
American Secretary of State, 
and slip — again at dawn — under 
the guns of Newchwang, 

V. HELD AS SPIES 8i 

Passed as unworthy of notice by 
the Port Arthur searchlights we 
fall prey to a sour chap in Ascot 
mustache and frock whiskers, 

VL ANNOINTED 93 

The Japanese fleet -first holds me 
up, I convey my Chief to the 
Yalu, bid him farewell on a ven- 
turesome journey and am fairly 
launched on my career of ty- 
phoons and battles, 

VII. AGAIN A CAPTIVE 113 

An army at sea bursts on us and 
goes out, the Chief escapes, I 



Contents. 9 

CHAPTER PAGE 

dawdle about Fort Arthur, in- 
vite out a destroyer and get a 
shot across the bows. 



VIIL A WILDERNESS OF MINES. . 133 
Sailing among four thousand 
mines we are put harshly under 
marine guard, hustled to confine- 
ment, released as suddenly and 
face the acres of destruction to 
ironic laughter. 

IX. THE QUEST FOR NEWS 153 

We organise the service, bring 
the Fawan into repute, capture 
the first guileless officer and 
learn of the landing of the sec- 
ond army. 

X, A MISS IN THE DARK 171 

Surrounded by the fleet the ad- 
miral condescends to look upon 
us, warns us from the coast for 
fear of mines, we call his bluff, 
and -find it— a full hand. 



ID Contents. 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XL THE SINKING OF A BATTLE- 
SHIP 193 

The officers show signs of mu- 
tiny, we see the bombardment off 
Kerr Bay, hear gigantic explo- 
sions and run afoul of devilish 
torpedo boats to find — the Hat- 
suse sunk. 

XIL THE STRIKE 213 

Led by the skipper and the Chief, 
the crew strikes to escape the 
great risk, I ship pirates and ruf- 
fians and am about to put to sea 
with certain wreck ahead, when I 
discover loyalty of the finest 
brand. 

XIIL OUTCAST 233 

We train down to quick-firing 
precision, are taken in by the 
blockade watch, are warned from 
our last refuge and at length get 
the cold shoulder from our only 
remaining friends. 



Contents. ii 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XIV. ONE MORE DESPERATE 253 

A white man lost in the Yellow 
Sea climbs aboard for a drink 
and I see him oif on his lonely, 
defiant way against the great 
fortress — a junkful of refuge 
Greeks brings the true story of 
Port Arthur, and after recording 
a big scoop, I put hard about for 
battle. 

XV. A BATTLE AT SEA 269 

Gladly adventuring forth for new 
sights we come upon the greatest 
of all. The revelation of reality 
that lay therein. A modern sea 
Ught, one hundred and thirty 
years after John Paul Jones. 

XVI. SOLD OUT 285 

Mistaking a merchant boat for 
the Fawan, the Russians sink it, 
while the Japanese buy my pre- 
cious dispatch boat from under 
my feet — cornered at last — fare- 
well — off to join Nogi. 




Scene of Operations of The Fawan 



UNDER WAY. 



CHAPTER I. 

In which, after being the object of all the touts, 
sharks and beach-combers on the China coast, and 
succumbing to as few of them as my youth and in- 
experience warrants, I set out on a cruise around 
Robin Hood's Barn, accompanied by the Korean 
Prime Minister Elect. 

The Victoria was not the boat we chartered. 
She was a wreck suitable for what she finally 
became — a blockade runner. She was twenty- 
seven years old, had been brought up in ballast 
with coal from Australia, her ribs were of iron, 
she had no bulkheads, and her engines were 
old-fashioned compounds. When she finally 
was bought by the Russians, it cost them ten 
thousand dollars to put her to sea and then she 
could only drag her miserable way over to the 
Port Arthur Channel, where she sat and 
rotted until the end of the war. She sold for 
30,000 mex, and yet the special brand of shark 
that wanted to take me in on her, tried to stick 
me for repairs and ten thousand mex a month. 

It was but one of the devious ways to rope 
me into silly extravagance, when word went 
down the coast that a young American, on his 
milk, was out for a dispatch boat, and that he 



1 6 The Events Man. 

wanted her quickly. The Victoria lay, an old 
forsaken tub, up the Shanghai creek when I 
was piloted to her. I passed her up without 
winking an eye. 

Then they brought me in succession all the 
halt, lame and blind among the seacraft of the 
region. Word went gaily forth that I was the 
proper mark for every weather-beaten tub in 
the Yellow Sea. There was the Pronto, that 
got seventeen wounds in her as she slipped out 
of Port Arthur one bright morning; the 
Samsui, the Victoria 11. , and a Russian whaler 
named George; a peach she was, and I thought 
long of taking her on. It was only a week 
after I looked at the George, that her first mate 
was murdered in his cabin. There was the 
steam pilot boat Shanghai together with a host 
of others, and I examined them all with that 
energy and foresight that is expected of a man 
who contemplates spending $50,000 of some- 
one else's money, and who is going out there- 
by to risk his life that the world may have 
instantaneous record of the sea battles of great 
powers. 

One of the neatest deals to pull my leg was 
put up in that hotbed of intrigue and scandal 



Under Way. 17 

called Shanghai. I offered 7,000 mex a month 
for the boat^ — she was a ripper, with double 
engines and a long funnel — and that was a 
thousand more than she was worth. The gang 
that held her said (sotto voce) : "We'll hold 
out for $10,000, but will finally let her go, if 
need be, for $7,000. At that we're to the good 
a clear thousand a month. Then, when he 
comes in, we'll put in a bill for $10,000 extra, 
due to inefficient handling. We can say that 
the hull is strained, the boilers primed or the 
engines unduly taxed." One of my pals from 
down the coast, however, put me on to this deal, 
and when they refused my first offer I sat tight. 
They came back asking when I would make 
another offer, and I told them that there was 
not going to be any other offer. 

Then the Fawan hove in sight and I be- 
came glad. Fawan ! That's Chinese for "Good 
Luck" ! She was a salvage boat for work un- 
der the Taku forts, lightering heavy vessels 
over the bar, and for wrecking in the Gulf of 
Pechili ; as neat a shell as floats the Yellow Sea ! 
When I think of her my heart goes out as to an 
old and tried friend. The days and nights that 
I have lain on her, the dangers that she has 



1 8 The Events Man. 

seen me through, the seas that we have sur- 
vived together, the sights that she has led me 
among, the forces that she has alHed me with; 
these and more bring my memory back to her 
with the joy of intimacy and the pride of gal- 
lant association. 

The dauntless old Fawan! How I have 
slipped over the bar to meet her at two in the 
morning, fingering a wire ordering me straight 
to the Port Arthur guns, and how she has risen, 
like a bulldog in leash, to the feat! How I 
have paced those decks month after month on 
calm days, and again on tempestuous days off 
the Korean coast, while she pounded and 
strained her tough little sides till I thought bar 
and stave could stand no more ! And even now 
as I wake up in the morning I fancy I can hear 
the donkey engine just over my head going 
^'clumpety, clump, clump, clump" as the anchor 
comes up rasping and dripping just outside my 
port hole. You would hardly guess how inti- 
mate one could become with a boat like that, 
just as one might with a human being. I be- 
came so accustomed to her every whim and 
motion that if the revolutions slowed down ten 



Under Way. 19 

a minute, I would sit up with a start, knowing 
well that the drill of habit was afoul. 

The Fawan belonged to the Taku Tug and 
Lighter Company, an English concern, and 
business being dull just then, they gave me a 
three months' charter with a three months' 
option for 3,500 taels a month. That was 
cheap ! She was registered at about 300 tons, 
and in a seaway rolled like a canal boat, but 
she could go — as well as any tug boat goes. 
She was built for towing, was all engines, and 
when you put that into speed and not weight 
she boomed like an Eastern liner. Her funnel 
was forty feet above the grates, and I believe 
she could have burned bricks — an awful 
draught ! Then she was rigged with water bal- 
last tanks, fore and aft, drew seven feet six on 
an even keel, so that she could easily make nine 
feet aft and six forward, or vice versa. And 
this was hot stuff when we got over in the 
Korean swells, and down among the shallows 
of the Liaotung. She was quite new, built in 
'97, had towing blades, and when she went 
ahead full speed she shook like a leaf. If the 
screw turned at the top revolution you felt con- 
vinced that you were getting the worth of your 



20 The Events Man. 

money. It made you feel sick and quittish, but 
there was wind and steam behind it, and that 
was what we wanted for a dispatch boat, for 
the Fawan beat the game many a time, and 
there were four months in the year 1904 when 
she ranked as queen in the world of news. 

As for the rest of her, the Fawan was 125 
feet long, 22 feet in the beam and she carried a 
searchlight of 2,500 candle power for wrecking. 
She had steam steering gear and was electric 
lighted. She carried a crew of twenty-five, and 
when she was put on full speed across the Gulf 
of Pechili, carrying a world beat, she made her 
steady ten knots, which is good speed for a tug 
in those waters. Some men grow strangely 
fond of a horse that can carry them up hill and 
down for many days and never tire and never 
go bad. Well, I loved the Fawan! 

But there was a crew to get, and most of all 
I needed a skipper. My rooms at the Astor 
House, in Shanghai, soon became filled with 
the refuse of the coast, and my days were worn 
with despair lest I be taken in by some gentry, 
liquor-logged and ship-soaked. But there came 
among them a prince — McDonnel ! If ever in 
North China, you will not miss word of Mc- 



Under Way. ' 21 

Donnel. He is known up and down the coast 
as the most daring pilot that ever took the Taku 
Bar at ebb. If you need a dauntless spirit for 
war or peace, seek Mac. Incidentally, if you 
require the proper ingredients for a Canton 
cocktail, ask Mac, who swore by all that's holy 
that he would be mine till death, and I promptly 
signed him as skipper at 500 mex a month. 

There was, however, the necessary confirma- 
tion still lacking from the office. I had cabled 
the beginning of the venture and was still wait- 
ing for funds. Meanwhile Mac hung around. 
Three days passed. The fourth he came asking 
for confirmation, which I could not give. He 
told me he had an offer and would hold it off 
until the next afternoon at five o'clock. He 
would not tell me what it was, and the next 
day at five I was obliged to say that no money 
was yet in sight. The American fleet, it then 
developed, had offered him fifteen hundred 
taels to take them out for target practice in 
Nimrod sound. It was a ten days' job, for 
which he would get as much as three months 
would have netted him in my service. I thought 
it mighty white to hold off for forty-eight hours 
on a deal like that, and with sadness and de- 



22 The Events Man. 

spair saw him go to lead the Monadnock and 
Admiral Cooper's ships into peaceful waters. 
Mac almost sobbed as he left me, and I well 
know the wrench it cost him to forego a peek at 
real war. In all the career of the Fawan, the 
loss of McDonnel as skipper was its sorest blow. 

However, money will buy anything in China, 
even to a pilot and a crew. The crew I easily 
found, but wandered about for two days longer 
in search of a master, my money having arrived 
meanwhile, and finally was obliged to put out 
for Chefoo to look for the proper skipper there. 

Before I went, I had stores to lay in, and all 
the preparations for three months at sea to 
make. Drake fell on my neck about this time. 
He was one of those Americanized Shanghigh- 
landers who have failed in every quarter of the 
globe, finally being deposited in that far fringe 
of civilization. He swore that he knew and 
revered my father, and had conceived a sudden 
and most ardent friendship for myself, hinting 
meanwhile that, as he was the proprietor of a 
mushroom grocery store, it would be but pa- 
triotic for me to put in supplies there. I as- 
sented, and passed one jolly morning spending 
money in his place. To all my questions as to 



Under Way. 23 

the price of things he answered: "Should 
friends talk about money ? I assure you I think 
so well of you that you shall get the very lowest 
I can charge, consistent with my own sense of 
justice to myself. I always do well by my cus- 
tomers, but I shall do extra well by you." 

I have often wondered what his customers 
get, for my bill called for $700. It knocked me 
flat. Some of the items I knew were wrong. 
Dried apricots, for instance, he put down at 
forty cents a pound, while I remembered buy- 
ing them in the States for fourteen. I went to 
a Chinaman, had the bill duplicated, item for 
item, and found it to foot up $400. I returned 
Drake's bill with a note which I cannot recall 
now, but which seemed to me at the moment to 
be a masterpiece of sarcasm. In it I remarked 
that while ordinarily in favor of trading with 
Americans, I did not see why I should pay 
double for the privilege. 

In all, the monthly expenses footed up to ten 
thousand mex. This included provisions, coal, 
crew and lease, but made no count of insur- 
ance, and when I learned the bill for that, I 
was prepared to throw up the sponge. The 
best I could get was five per cent, a month of 



24 The Events Man. 

the ship's value. In other words, for a year I 
should have had to pay in insurance, sixty per 
cent, of the full value. It was bad business, 
the underwriters said, among mines, sliding in 
the dark through battleships, and looking every 
night for a hole below the waterline. In the 
momentary despair thus occasioned, I suddenly 
bethought me to go bond for the whole show, 
and accordingly cabled the office for such au- 
thority, which promptly came. I therefore 
gave bond for $40,000, and went off to war 
with my own life in my hands, while over my 
head hung the small fortune reposing in the 
chubby sides of the doughty Fawan. 

Arrived at Chefoo I first ran into the 
full complications of Oriental red tape. I sur- 
vived forty-eight hours of official espionage, for 
which the later investigations of Japanese men- 
of-war held no parallel. Every member of the 
crew had to be sworn before the British consul, 
for the Fawan sailed under the Union Jack. I 
had wired to have the state department from 
Washington authorize the transfer of the ship's 
charter to the American register, but the trick 
could not be turned, and I found I must sail for 
aye under the British flag. Then the tonnage 



Under Way. 25 

dues and the ship's papers had to be overhauled, 
and at last everything submitted for the clear- 
ances. At length, ready to start, I still lacked 
a pilot, when the brother of a Kobe friend hove 
in sight, embraced me in the hotel, and prompt- 
ly volunteered his services. 

"But you need a master's certificate,'' said I. 

"For ten years I've held one," said he. 

"You're just the man then. How much do 
you want?" 

"Nothing," he replied, leaned over and whis- 
pered in my ear. I smiled, frowned, hesitated, 
blushed, then nodded assent. He dragged me 
off to the bar, and an hour later there began to 
be hoisted to the decks of the Fawan the half 
ton of contraband, passage for which was to 
pay the volunteer pilot's way. 

Calling on the various dignitaries, I soon 
learned that the Korean Prime Minister, just 
elected to his high office, was in town and eager 
for a return home. He had left his opera 
bouffe country a mere plenipotentiary, but a 
wire had recalled him to the portfolio of state, 
and now he was stranded, for declaration of 
war had cut off all direct communication with 
Chemulpo, the harbor of Seoul, the Korean cap- 



26 The Events Man. 

ital, and the only way of return then in sight for 
him was the long, expensive and not certain 
way back to Shanghai, thence to Nagasaki, and 
thence by small boat to Fusan. Cables in hand 
told me I was bound for Chemulpo, via Port 
Arthur, and I volunteered the Fawan. 

Gratefully the Korean Minister accepted, in 
the name of his Emperor, in the name of him- 
self, in the name of his wife, and in the name of 
his numerous suite. I told him to be on board 
the next afternoon before three o'clock, and 
then I spent the intervening time in fitting up 
his cabin. I looked for a Korean flag for deco- 
ration, but found that no one in Chefoo had 
ever heard of the Korean flag, nor could I get 
any one of the sailor jacks in harbour to tell its 
complexion or contour. At last, in the back of 
the great dictionary at the American consulate, 
on a plate bearing the flags of all nations, I 
found a likeness, and hurried off to a Chink. 
The next noon I decorated the Minister's cabin 
with a counterfeit presentment of his soverign's 
banner. 

As the Korean minister came on board, with 
his billy-goat whiskers, his diminutive wife and 
his sheepish suite, I was puzzling over the six 



Under Way. 2y 

cables received within the past twenty-four 
hours. They came from various parts of the 
world, and informed me : ( i ) That the Japan- 
ese fleet was closing in permanently on Port 
Arthur; (2) that the Russian fleet was mo- 
mentarily expected out to give battle; (3) that 
the first Japanese army was landed and the in- 
vasion of Manchuria begun; (4) that I was not 
to be allowed north of Forth Arthur ; (5) that I 
was expected to return a news alignment of the 
situation within forty-eight hours, and (6) that 
I was to proceed to Chemulpo via Port Arthur. 
As I read the last cable to the minister he 
looked aghast and pointed to the map. There 
he placed his finger on Port Arthur. It lay due 
north. He then pointed to Chemulpo. It lay 
due east. He shrugged his shoulders and his 
mouth drooped. It was as if a man making 
time from Chicago to New York should start 
first for Denver. 



A SCAB SKIPPER. 



CHAPTER II. 

I pass the worst day of my life — the two worst 
days, in fact — and meet the fate which makes me a 
scab skipper. 

Dawn must be the universal omen for the un- 
known, for it is the moment of executions and, 
of the saiHng of ships. We weighed anchor out 
of Chef 00 harbor one March dawn and a devil- 
ish bad dawn it was — sickly, wind-slopped and 
tight rammed with gale. And it was into the 
blank unknown we went — the smart little 
Fawan with my ill-assorted crew, my sneak- 
thief of a skipper, my prime minister, his billy- 
goat suite, and yours truly, than whom a more 
forlorn and tide-pushed wily wight ever went 
off to the sea in a boat. 

I had long since determined to evade the Port 
Arthur instructions because (i) there were 
mines, warships and orders to sink on sight in 
that direction, (2) I was already leary of the 
skipper, and (3) I was under orders, being up 
to that moment, the mere agent for a Bigger 
Man, whom I was for dashing on to Chemulpo 
to pick up that I might turn the responsibility 
of the whole weighty business over to him, filled 



32 The Events Man. 

with risk and sight-seeing though it might be. 
So it was for Chemulpo that we headed that 
weary, sad, over-due dawn. 

As I have remarked before, the Fawan, in a 
sea of even decent size, rolled like a canal boat, 
and we were no sooner clear of the light, than 
she pitched into an angry belt of souse and scut- 
tle that showed me, straight off the bat, the 
antics of which she was capable, and the danc- 
ing tantrums that lay always snug under her 
keel. 

I soon went topside, and there, in a corner of 
the bridge,! found my miserable skipper, wound 
in a Madras shawl and shivering in the depths 
of a wicker chair. There was a woe-begone 
Chinese bos'n on the lookout, but the skipper 
held down the anachronistic chair with that pea- 
green aspect that spells only internal disorder. 
I uttered several remarks utterly irrelevant to 
the thoughts uppermost in my mind, to which 
he replied in similar quality, though he finally 
said, incidentally: 

'Well, I hope you're satisfied now, with a 
tug boat lost on the high seas." To this melan- 
choly observation I replied nothing before he 



A Scab Skipper. 33 

added: "Don't you think we had better run 
into Wei-Hei-Wei until this blows over ?" 

"Yes. That's a pious idea," I answered, and 
went below. From that time on, mere thought 
of the skipper was enough to rasp my nerves. 

As we pulled into the broad, gay British har- 
bour and all the gaunt, grim old men-of-war 
dipped flags to us, the drooping tail between my 
legs resumed life, whipped cur though I was, 
and I soon regained my animal spirits. Once 
on my feet after that I was all right, and never 
since, though I have stood by the wheel through 
the toil of a typhoon, have I been sea-sick. 

Late in the afternoon we weighed anchor and 
headed on due east. At that time we figured 
the chart, and found it 145 miles to Northwest 
Rock, which marked the difficult entrance to the 
harbor of Chemulpo. At the rate we were go- 
ing that would have brought us there at 5 
A. M., so we ordered the engines slowed down 
to ninety revolutions, which would bring us in 
at early forenoon instead. The skipper said he 
would take the bridge early and, as he needed 
a shut-eye, asked me to hold it down until 11 
P. M., after which he would stay by the wheel 
to find harbor bearings. To this I readily as- 



34 The Events Man. 

sented, being too green at that moment to un- 
derstand that no skipper worthy the name 
would surrender the bridge to a novice (he 
knowing well my experience, as I had frankly 
told him) at so critical a moment. 

He went below and I stood there on the 
bridge that was to see me through the four 
banner months of my life, through storm and 
battle, through rain and shine and through 
many a nerve-breaking race for a beat on the 
world's cable. It was a trim little bridge, and 
I remember it with every fondness that any old 
weather-beaten mariner has for his trusted 
home. The wheel house was partitioned and 
glassed in, while from the starboard side of the 
bridge, led a neat brass-railed companion-way 
to the deck below. All the lookout was shut in 
with heavy tarpaulin, except for a round hole 
that led from a man's waist up well above his 
head, and from which every sea complexion 
could be scanned. In the rear was the board 
that held the telegraph and behind that the fun- 
nel. Just around the corner of the funnel ran 
a shute to the hold. Down the shute I could 
look to the stokers' way and see them shoveling 
in the coal that cost fifteen cents a shovelful. 



A Scab Skipper. 35 

As I looked thus at the rise in the month's ex- 
pense account, the money sHpping into smoke, I 
was tempted, as MacDonnell would say, to sob 
like a child, for the limit of my weekly auditing 
up to that moment had been a dollar fifteen for 
carfare and downtown lunches. You see I was 
the city reporter, loose for the first time on a 
world detail. 

In that dreary night wait I inadvertently 
came across the incompetence of my cringing 
skipper. Incompetence it was of the worst, 
and stupidity, and ignorance and recklessness 
all rolled into one. Racking my brains in sus- 
picion and distrust, for I felt sole sponsor for 
the forty thousand dollars under my feet, I soon 
found that the wheel and bridge compasses did 
not gibe. The latter sheered a full four points 
shy of the other, for there were water bubbles 
under the alcohol, and no man could tell which 
was right and which was wrong. It was the 
skipper's duty to verify this before he left port. 
This I later learned, but then I dimly, impo- 
tently, felt the confusion, the possible disaster — 
and I grew faint. 

The skipper relieved me at 11 :oo, but I was 
back on the bridge at 3:30, to find the same 



36 The Events Man. 

old Chink wobbling in front of the lookout and 
his worshipful self asleep in the wicker chair. 
What could I say? 

But dawn came — dawn the second, and no 
longer wind and wave. We were in the lee 
now of Chopeki point and fair under the shores 
of the Land of the Morning Calm. They are 
vermin, these Koreans, but I must admit that 
under the wide expanse of heaven there lies 
nowhere to the knowledge of one who has 
sailed well each of the seven seas, a land more 
wondrous in color, more uplifting in the joy 
of verdure than this garden spot that some 
of those lazy old beggars in the long ago 
dubbed the Morning Calm. There she stretch- 
ed before us — dyed in seas of saffron, mauve, 
lilac, vermilion, sapphire, esthetic in the baths 
of all new glory, rejuvenescent with the birth 
of worlds and men, land sired in calm, and 
girthed in eternal morn, peerless Korea ! 

As she hove over the port quarter, born 
queen-like out of the mists, there came upon my 
vision another sight, newer, grander, far more 
inspiring — my first glance at war. A side 
glance it was, a mere peep, but I looked, and 
knew and grew wise. They were sweeping 



A Scab Skipper. 37 

lazily away from us, into the north, and I 
counted them; one, two, three, four, Japanese 
transports bound for the Yalu, funnels split- 
ting the blue with puffs of black. I could see 
the new sheds tightening the decks for the 
horses, myriad tiny slant-eyed faces smother- 
ing the taffrail and lazily flaunting over all the 
zig-zag army flag. I watched them sweep 
grandly on — two thousand war-like souls in 
each, bearers of ache and anguish to how many 
Russian hearts, of slow-nodding pain and 
ghastly concealing smile to how many Japan- 
ese mat-rooms beyond the shogi I knew not. 

I was pulled from my joy with a stab. For 
my incompetent skipper revealed to me that he 
had left port minus that first essential of the 
well prepared mariner — a book of sailing di- 
rections. The approaches to Chemulpo are 
littered with the islands of the Prince Imperial 
archipelago which numbers some odd thou- 
sands of spots in the sea, varying from lonely 
and verdureless granite rocks to fifty-acre plots 
on which fishermen can pitch drying racks and 
nets. It is one of the most dangerous en- 
trances in the world and through it pass two 
channels, the main one to the south, and that 



38 The Events Man. 

known as the "Flying Fish" to the north. Find- 
ing either is quite as difficult a trick as any 
sea-dog wants, but it is made infinitely light if 
one had a book of sailing directions which tells 
every reef, shoal, tide-rip and shallow of every 
important rock among the thousands. When I 
asked the skipper where this book was, he light- 
ly and casually mentioned that he had for- 
gotten to bring it, and I wondered what I 
should say to a hunter if he went after bear 
without a gun. 

We had long since slowed down to half 
speed, and were now, past mid-forenoon, drift- 
ing with the tide. About eleven o'clock the 
islands began coming out of the mists in every 
direction and I soon found we were entirely 
surrounded by them, that the last transport 
was visible by only a thin smudge on the north- 
ern horizon, hiking at twice our speed for the 
Yalu, that elsewhere there was not a sail in 
sight and that we were in momentary danger 
of impalement. Back and forth we argued the 
question of the northwest rock, the guide 
by which we were to pilot our course through 
the Prince Imperial. We could not agree, 
and so I finally insisted that, for the sake 



A Scab Skipper. 39 

of the argument, we come together on the 
proposition and sail for some rock, which 
was surely better than drifting on any. We 
picked our "pidgin" as the quartermaster said, 
and ran for it half-speed. The skipper had 
remembered at least one detail of moment. 
The depth about the northwest is twelve fath- 
oms and he knew it, but as we slipped under 
the lee of our compromise northwest the lead 
called back five fathoms. We were strictly up 
against it. 

At this critical moment my prize skipper 
became utterly demoralized, sank into his 
wicker chair, ordered the engines "stand by" 
and then "full stop" and, before I realised it, 
they were throwing off the starboard anchor. 

"If you can't go forward at eleven o'clock in 
the morning?" I cried, hurrying to the bridge, 
"how about dark ?" I was almost in the throes 
of MacDonnell's only alternative — "to sob like 
a child," for there was the open sea behind, the 
reefs ahead, the rocks all about, while the wind 
had changed and the mist was again closing in. 
The distant rocks were becoming lost to view 
and I feared that we would presently not be 
able to see twenty fathoms ahead. 



40 The Events Man. 

"The fact is," said the skipper, looking at me 
with sincerity and frankness, for which he 
evidently expected to receive a suitable reward, 
*'the fact is, Fm lost." 

"What do you suggest?" I cried, not at all 
unangered by his child-like simplicity of heart. 

"I can suggest nothing," he said. 

At this interesting moment the Korean 
Minister sent one of his billy-goat suite to 
enquire what hour we would anchor at Che- 
mulpo. I realized that the moment was one in 
which a slack back and a watery voice similar 
to, that exhibited by my beloved skipper would, 
as Napoleon well said, lose the day, so I replied 
without hesitation : 

"Three o'clock." 

This gave me nearly four hours before His 
Excellency could again be heard from, and 
some seven or eight hours before night settled 
upon us that morning might at length reveal 
a lone wreck undeserving of pity, blame or 
dole. There comes a moment in each life 
called the parting of the ways, from which a 
man goes in one of two ways — either forward 
or back. I may have found a third way, which 
lies down. That, however, is the story. 



A Scab Skipper. 41 

Up to that moment my career as a mariner 
was limited to the paddHng of a skiff down 
the Saskatchewan, sitting abaft the tiller of 
a naphtha launch on Minnetonka and travel- 
ing first cabin on the Kaiser Wilhelm and the 
Empress of Japan. But I rose suddenly to 
command, born a skipper by the needs of the 
moment, and assumed sole charge of the lives 
of thirty human beings, including that of the 
new Prime Minister of Korea, while my un- 
seasoned head plotted the escape from for- 
feiture of that forty thousand dollar bond, as 
I looked out upon the illusions of the chart- 
less archipelago. When I think of what I 
went through that day and the days that fol- 
lowed I doubt not that I would reply 'Yes!' 
should some one recklessly ask me to pilot an 
ocean liner from Frisco to Bombay. 

"Half speed ahead!" I rang on the tele- 
graph and turned to the quartermaster. 

"Catchee lead, makee soundings, allee same 
port and starboard" I called, in the vernacular 
that passes for speech in that benighted region. 

Prestige rose skylarking. Before that I had 
been addressed "Yes, sor!" The reply came 
now: 



42 The Events Man. 

"Yes, master!'' 

From that time on, I was among the Chinks 
as a ward captain in a precinct election. 



SERVING TIME. 



CHAPTER III. 

I find a lieutenant of worthy steel, go keel-down 
on a sand bar, run the boat's nose into a loaded col- 
lier and become duly surprised at a gold watch pre- 
sented by the Prime Minister. 

Then Cromarty arrived. It may seem of 
slight importance to you, reader, sitting at ease 
in your chair, for me to say that Cromarty 
arrived, but if you had been with me on the 
bridge of the Fawan, with the dense Korean 
mist closing in, a fat-headed skipper on your 
hands and those infinite islands of the Prince 
Imperial dancing weird destructive phantasma- 
goria before your eyes, you too, would have 
seen that the arrival of Cromarty was the key 
to the situation. 

He but touched his cap and said to me : "If 
you'll allow me to be so bold, sir, I would sug- 
gest that you hold to your orders, sir. You 
will find the engines will answer every time 
you touch the telegraph, just as if she were 
your own child, sir.'^ 

With that Cromarty respectfully withdrew. 
How well I knew him in the days that came! 
Cromarty was my chief engineer and the sort 



46 The Events Man. 

that steps last into a lifeboat when the fog 
horns grunt, cold and hoarse, above a wreck. 
He was a Scotchman, but that is saying noth- 
ing, for every engineer of consequence is a 
Scot. Sixty years old he was, grey, frosted by 
seas of time and gale, bent with service and 
work. 

He knew his engines as I know the keys of 
my typewriter — nay, as a mother her child. 
He had seen them put into the Fawan. He 
had served with them ever since, save for an 
eighteen months' absence on home leave and he 
knew them so well that when he came back 
from that leave he sat for days listening to the 
propeller chug-chug, testing the valves, anxious 
with an unknown, ill-defined anxiety, as when 
a hen realizes that one of her brood of twenty 
is missing. At last a cry of joy ! "One of the 
nuts on the crank shaft is loose!'' a hurried 
twist, and he settled back into repose, his be- 
loved again in perfect trim. 

Cromarty had been the Fawan' s skipper for 
a brief week of glory as she went up the river 
in the Boxer troubles and he had stood on her 
bridge, with British Maxims operating from 
her bows, while the forts replied. One day he 



Serving Time. 47 

showed me where the bullets had plowed the 
hull. Veteran of four wars he at one time had 
been chief engineer of the private yacht of the 
Chinese Governor of Formosa and he looked 
the part — sea-dog to the marrow, wind-stained, 
weather-racked, with a slash like that from a 
knife blade in each cheek, where the jaw bone 
had pulled the flesh. All this I learned later 
of Cromarty. In fact, nearly all I am telling 
you I learned later, for I was green then — 
green as the fresh little boys that light cigar- 
ettes as they sit frivolously on kegs of dyna- 
mite. All I knew was that Cromarty was the 
engineer and that he was standing pat. 

As Cromarty spoke there passed our bows 
a fishing smack manned by four Koreans — 
primitive to a base degree, and dressed in flow- 
ing robes like the prophets of Israel. They 
came out of the mist weirdly and were passing 
again weirdly into the mist like a piece of 
scenery pulled across the landscape, when I 
realized that they could solve the difficulty. So 
I pulled the telegraph to "Full speed ahead" 
with a new feeling of confidence born of Cro- 
marty's silent support, and explained to the 



48 The Events Man. 

quartermaster that we must confiscate one of 
those fishermen and take him on for pilot. 

The moment we turned, the Koreans scooted 
hke wild geese. Evidently they had never 
seen a steamer before and they began pushing 
the water with their hands in their frantic 
desire to escape the calamity. Some of these 
Sunday-feature chaps that come out to do war 
with a field glass and an umbrella talk tall guff 
about the poetry of primitive man, but give me 
civilization. 

We would have had them easily had the lead 
held, but the channel went suddenly dry 
and I had to signal *'stop" over a two fathom 
drop. I sent my Japanese boy down to get the 
Korean suite up on deck so they might signal 
to their silly countrymen that we were not 
cannibals. The six billy-goats arrived with 
towels and ran frantically up and down the 
aft rail, jabbering, waving, and leaping to the 
halyards. Disgraceful the scene was — silly 
when I think of it, yet we had to have those 
fishermen. They, however, gaining headway 
now, for we had all but overhauled them, were 
renewing efiForts to round the nearest island. 

With that a brilliant idea came to me and I 



Serving Time. 49 

told my boy to seize the Korean flag which was 
then decorating the Minister's state-room. This 
he did, tearing tack holes through the cloth in 
his hurry. It was weeping business to see my 
present so desecrated, but the need was urgent, 
and the Minister forgave. The flag once out 
the fishermen hauled to long enough to listen to 
the jay-call of the leading billy-goat. No 
argument, however, would convince them, 
though gold and untold honors were offered. 
They simply yelled: "Channel south," and 
paddled off, to be lost in the mist. 

Well, there we were, as badly off as ever. 
The transports had gone north and here was 
the second proof that Chemulpo lay south. It 
was fifty or sixty miles back out of the islands 
and before we could have returned night would 
have been upon us. There was but one thing 
to do — take pot luck to the south. 

So we turned south at half speed. I got 
four men out with bamboos and started them 
sounding on both sides. Our course veered 
back and up, and at length we had so completely 
patrolled the coast and had been so repeatedly 
turned back by slack water that I sized up the 
situation as admitting of solution on only one 



50 The Events Man. 

bearing. This lay between two rather largish 
rocks then on our port bow. Beyond that it 
seemed to me, with my feeble vision and limited 
nautical savey, that we should pick up deep 
water. The skipper's funk had put me to the 
pole and I was jealous of the pace. I could see 
Cromarty, from the corner of my eye, leaning 
against the engine room door, hat cocked over 
eye, arms folded on chest, in perfect nonchal- 
ance. He was the most unconcerned man on 
the boat. "The devil I care if she does go 
down,'* his attitude seemed to say "You pay 
the shot. Its not my funeral,'' and I caught 
him once sizing up the ship's boat with his eye. 
Well could I guess the mental calculation that 
lay behind: in a dingy built for six what will 
become of thirty-two? 

"Half ahead" I signalled, and turned her 
helm due south between the largest rocks. Soon 
the boys were crying soundings of three fath- 
oms and I had to signal "Slow!" But I was 
bound to go on till the last possible moment, 
for beyond lay our only apparent hope that 
night. I steered for a middle course and kept 
on. 

"Two fathoms, half," the lead called "two" 



Serving Time. 51 

"one and half/' "one'' and I wired Cromarty 
"slower." 

Nearer, nearer, nearer came the rocks, 
shallower, shallower, shallower grew the 
water, and rising, rising, rising came my hair. 

"Nine feet!" cried the lead. "Eight feet!" 
I suddenly remembered that we drew seven 
feet, six. The telegraph rang "Stop!" to the 
engines. The keel scraped gravel, the Fawan 
groaned, wavered, and — slid over. 

"Half speed ahead" I rang. Three — four — 
five fathoms, sounded the lead. "Full speed 
ahead," and the China boys answered "Mark 
eight," "Mark ten," "Mark twelve," and then 
"No bot." The Rubicon lay behind. 

The mist again, capricious as all things 
Korean, was lifting, and way off to the south 
I spotted smoke. That meant but one thing — 
the channel. That smoke came from a steamer, 
a big one, for she was hull down, fifteen or 
twenty miles away. As the fo^ lifted the day 
loomed out gloriously again and I began to 
hope we might not be so much after three at 
anchorage, after all, when I found that a skip- 
per's education is not complete merely because 
he has formed a resolution. 



52 The Events Man. 

It was plain as a man's face that we were 
creeping too near an island on the port side, so 
I called to the man at the wheel, mustering 
to my aid every dictatorial force I knew, "Hard 
t'starboard !'' This I presumed to be the 
correct command, but, to my consternation, 
the vessel, instead of veering into the open, 
turned square in for the island. It was as if, 
in guiding a horse, I had twisted the reins and 
turned the animal the wrong way, jerking him 
right as I pulled left. For when the wheel 
goes to starboard the ship veers to port. 

Oh! I was green. But, there was prestige 
to be preserved — aye, prestige is the thing, 
the only thing in Asia ! I betrayed not my em- 
barrassment, but, walking deliberately to the 
compass, all the while we were bound to certain 
disaster upon the rocks, uttered, after what I 
considered an appropriate interval for the rapid 
changing of a man's mind, the word "Steady," 
and then, without too great a loss of time, 
"Hard-a-port!" 

From then on it was easy. We picked the 
lights up, one by one, and, about 6:30 rounded 
Odalmi at the entrance to the outer roadstead 
and beyond, riding calmly at anchor saw the 



Serving Time. S3 

Vicksburg, the Fearless, the Pascal, an ItaHan 
cruiser and a Japanese gunboat. The funnel 
of the sunken Korietz showed above tide and 
beyond I could see like signs of the sinking of 
the Varyag and Sungari. 

But we were not through, and the most 
humiliating part of the day was yet to come. 
The skipper appeared at that interesting junc- 
ture, smiling and congratulatory. He showed 
no ruffle for his miserable flight and said, with 
a jaunty laugh, "I can take her in all right 
now." He certainly had the deepest crust I 
ever encountered. 

Still I was green, for I let him hold the 
bridge. He was all smiles now, the happy 
skipper pulling into port after travailing the 
deep. He stood up jaunty and careless, as 
though calling on every harbor roustabout to 
come see what a devil of a fellow he was. The 
Japanese consul in Chefoo had wired our pros- 
pective arrival and word had gone forth that 
the steamer conveying the Prime Minister elect 
be received with harbor honors. So we soon 
spied the harbor launch puffing down to meet 
us, the Korean flag at the mast head and a 
group of officials grouped solemnly on deck, 



54 The Events Man. 

waiting the auspicious moment. It was then, 
too, that, reaching the warships, the flags be- 
gan dipping. The skipper stood with his 
glasses, afore the lookout hole, rubbering, first 
at one war vessel then at another, giving all 
his attention to the laute who was directing 
the lowering of our flag to return the various 
salutes. We were ripping meanwhile at full 
speed ahead. I was a bit nervous, however, 
and suggested mildly that it might be better 
to go slow — the way looked shallow. 

"She's safe now," replied the skipper, "be- 
sides I'm at home here. I know these waters 
like my own door-yard." With that he turned 
the glasses on His British Majesty's Fearless, 
which was at that moment dipping, and faced 
around hurriedly, with anger in his voice, to 
rasp the laute into recognition. 

As the skipper spoke we went kerplunk on 
a sandbar and grounded fast. I grasped the 
telegraph and pulled her over to 'stop.' The 
skipper handed me a chesty stare and asked, 
"Who's running this ship?" Then he began 
manipulation of the telegraph. First he 
ordered her full speed ahead. Then, finding 
that but drove us deeper in the mud, he signalled 



Serving Time. 55 

full speed astern. But we were too far in by 
that time and it was no use. The Fawan lay 
wobbling helplessly, as a duck lies flapping its 
wings when shot in the mud. On our shame 
there gazed the jeering eyes of the navies of 
America and Britain, of France and Italy, of 
Japan and Korea. I wonder that I did not 
commit hari-kari on the spot. 

That was the end of the skipper for that 
voyage. I stepped to the telegraph and put 
my hand on the handle. The launch had 
boarded us meanwhile and the officials were 
kow-towing to the minister. I sat up as though 
grounding on the sand-bar was part of the 
program and when the minister approached 
me, accompanied by his full suite, I received 
him with every dignity becoming the occasion. 
But, as he backed away, I nabbed my Japanese 
boy and swore by all of Bushido that he must 
get me the pilot from that launch. Then I 
looked about helplessly for escape from the 
bar, on which we were every moment ground- 
ing faster and deeper, for the tide was com- 
mencing its out-race at an eight-mile clip. 

Again Cromarty arrived. He approached 
me with all respect due a skipper from a chief 



56 The Events Man. 

engineer, touched his hat poHtely and said: 
"We're stuck a Httle aft the bow, if you don't 
mind my saying it, sir. If you pump out the 
water ballast from the for'ard to the aft tanks 
she'll slide off." 

"Aye, sir," I replied and dismissed him with 
a scowl which plainly said that he had found 
the temerity to anticipate my own thought. 
No sooner had the water ballast changed, pur- 
suant to my orders, than the Fawan began to 
slip, slip, slip, and in two minutes she was free. 
I doubt if any of those watchful eyes on the 
men-of-war could have guessed that we had 
done ought but halt for the reception of harbor 
honors. 

The Japanese pilot turned up as the launch 
swung off, and not only politely touched his 
cap, but bowed to the floor. A ridiculous tiny 
chap he was, weazened with sixty years, and 
hardly enough weight in his shrivelled skin to 
resist a middling hard blow. He led us off 
past the war ships, which had by that time, 
without exception, given us the glad hand. 
We ran to the lee of the big island facing the 
bund and then struck across the channel to 
our anchorage. It was pitch dark, with only 



Serving Time. 57 

the ships' riding lights to guide us on and I 
could not get replies from the pilot, who 
answered every question, first with a low bow, 
then with a smile and a grimace, then with a 
lengthy string of honorifics in which he praised 
the virtues of my grandfather and of my great 
grandfather. After all this was translated by 
my boy, who did not understand English, I 
sometimes got the proper signal, and sometimes 
not. 

But on we went and I thought all was well. 
I breathed with some freedom, saying to my- 
self that the footless trip was over and that I 
would never again trail the seas so buccan- 
neerly clad. This was the very moment con- 
cerning which, with later experience, I should 
have felt most anxiety, for it was just then 
that I put her head about across the eight mile 
an hour tide and saw her nose ramming a 
6,000 ton collier which lay directly athwart our 
path. 

A steamer is not like a gasoline launch or 
an auto. She has rather big engines and you 
cannot put her astern in a minute. Though 
I grasped the handle of the telegraph and 
ripped it through the entire six points of the 



58 The Events Man. 

needle at once with a bang that must have 
brought old Cromarty to a sense of the needs 
of the situation there seemed no chance for us 
to miss an inglorious end there in the muggy- 
anchorage of that obscure port in Korea. The 
Fawan kept full on, speed above normal, and 
my pulse beat likewise. I could hear men run- 
ning along the deck of the collier and lowering 
cork fenders to belay the shock. 

"What a finish," I sobbed to myself and saw 
the great job glimmering, myself going down 
with my ship, for never could I face the paying 
of that forty-thousand bond on such a fluke. 

We missed the collier by some inches. I 
felt her cork fenders grind with a sweet crunch 
as the Fazvan glided off to Cromarty's swift 
reply. He was digging her full astern now 
and I looked aft just in time to find us crashing 
into a junk. Still a junk was not so bad as a 
collier. The collier weighed six thousand tons 
and the junk sixty. The Fawan would sur- 
vive and the cost of the junk would be but a 
few hundred, at most. I almost laughed with 
the sense of irresponsibility, but I called, "slow 
ahead'' and ported her helm, then "steady," and 



^ Serving Time. 59 

we avoided that tombstone, also, with a margin 
that no self-respecting skipper would record. 

"Stand by, starboard anchor," and then "Let 
go" I cried and you should have heard my 
voice. Togo after Tsushima wasn't in it with 
me for gala show of chest tones. "Get away, 
port anchor," "Can do," and we swung into the 
tide, tethered as neat as a biting horse with a 
cinch cast lariat. When that was over I re- 
moved the superfluous perspiration from my 
brow and went below to record in my dairy: 
"The worst day of my life." 

Next morning I was at breakfast when one 
of the Prime Minister's suite was hoisted over 
the taffrail. He was nearest the billy-goat of 
any and he kow-towed to the floor as he enter- 
ed. I thought the minister had forgotten 
something, and rose to greet him with all the 
superfluous rectitude I had imbibed in the Far 
East. He held in his hand a little flannel- 
covered board box and as he uttered his speech 
he laid it on the table under my hand. It held 
a gold watch, rather a good one, too — eighteen 
carat — and as I looked at it he said : 

"His Excellency directs me to say that he 
shall never forget your kindness and courage 



6o The Events Man. 

in bringing him across this dangerous channel 
among all the unknown terrors of war. He 
wants you to accept this watch as a slight token 
of his regard. It is one which he has worn 
for some time. He has now purchased another 
which is its exact duplicate and will always 
wear it. Whenever he looks at his watch he 
will think of you, and he hopes that when you 
look at your watch you will think of him. And 
if you ever come to Korea for a visit you are 
to remember that you must grant him the honor 
of being his guest." 

The duplicate watch game was a bluff. They 
always work that racket. But I swallowed it 
without a gulp and then hunted the ship over 
for some memento. I finally hit on one of 
those bum, pious photos of myself. 

Well, that was the worst day of my life. It 
was luck we got out — rank luck ! 



THE DIPLOMAT WINS. 



CHAPTER IV. 

We run afoul of the inefficiency of the British 
flag, are saved from the death of spies by the Ameri- 
can Secretary of State and slip — again at dawn — 
under the guns of Newchwang. 

Every port in the East at that time, the be- 
ginning of the war, was the centre of the 
human riff-raff that settles on the heels of 
mighty conflicts. From the four quarters they 
assembled as vultures fly in for prospective 
carrion. But the military fiats of the Japanese 
and the hopelessly involved red-tape of the Rus- 
sians put them utterly to the bad, so that con- 
sternation reigned from Shanghai up to Fusan, 
and back to Yokohama. Thus there were 
touts, gamblers, small-fry contractors, and 
floating correspondents tucked into every hall 
bedroom of every hotel along the coast. Every- 
where this floating population was ill-at-ease, 
clamorous, expectant. In each port the crowd 
believed that easy meat was waiting to be 
plucked in the next port. Drifting in from 
the states, or out of Suez, this motley gang 
usually struck Shanghai first, then Chef oo, then 
Chemulpo, then Soul, then Newchwang, and 



64 The Events Man. 

then, perhaps, back up along the Japanese 
coast. 

The next morning, when I found my Bigger 
Man, one of those writers of reputation whose 
erratic folHes are named by the simple-hearted 
the vagaries of Genius, he was trailing a full 
fleet of these gentry and his waters astern 
looked like the sampan overture to the arrival 
of an inbound liner. I had wired I was com- 
ing and he had collected the assorted occupants 
of the hall bed-rooms to come off and dine on 
his boat. When I saw the gang line up and 
the Daily News chow slip into these white- 
handed sons of graft, I was for weeping tears 
of vexation that my expense account should 
mount so high. But there was no shift out, 
he being the chief, so I sat tight. But when 
he announced that he would bring all the trail- 
ers who up to that moment had assured him he 
was hot-stuff, I gigged the bit. 

"It's I who signs the expense roll — it's I the 
ofBce will size up for the chow bill, and I'm for 
making good on expense by charging passage 
money. It's fifty dollars a piece for these 

" said I, waving my hand at his following 

of touts. 



The Diplomat Wins. 65 

The Bigger Man spread the news and there 
was considerable backing off. The passage 
list of the Fawan dwindled until it stood simply 
*'one associated press correspondent, fifty dol- 
lars to Chefoo.'' With that the Bigger Man 
fished a lank and benign-faced individual from 
the crowd. "Let me introduce you/' said he, 
"to my friend, the Judge." 

"What's his name?" said I, aside. 

"Well — I don't know his name. Call him 
the Judge. He's a good fellow." So I found 
him and so I have always found him, a good 
fellow. We chatted some and then the Judge 
withdrew, sending word later, when he learned 
of the embargo, that he thought he would not 
go this trip. The Bigger Man went for him 
and received a confession that the Judge was 
not at that moment prepared to dig up. It 
seems that while in Chefoo he had heard that 
things were booming in Korea and had parted 
with his watch for passage money. Now, in 
Korea, he learned that the state of public ex- 
penditures was no more healthy than in Chefoo, 
though if he could but get back to Chefoo he 
felt sure he would make his fortune. That was 
the epidemic those days. You heard the same 



66 The Events Man. 

story everywhere, and at length came near 
investing in mythical acres of diamonds. The 
Bigger Man pleaded again for the Judge and 
the fiat went forth that if he should dig up 
some freight he might come along. 

The Judge's face lighted up when he heard 
this news and I caught several chance sights 
of him that afternoon, button-holing people on 
a search for freight. His was a negative 
character always. He entered into conversa- 
tion but took no audible part therein. He al- 
ways laughed at our jokes at the right time — 
and moderately. He always wept at the right 
time — and moderately. In fact, I was thor- 
oughly impressed with the profound sympathy 
and savvy of the Judge. Later, in confidence, 
when I inquired of his profession, he explained 
that he had taken a post graduate course in 
brick-laying. Apparently that did not seem 
suited to his eminent talents and he now be- 
lieved himself to be on the high road toward 
coming into his proper inheritance of graft. 
As he button-holed the merchants of Chemulpo 
that day there was no visible evidence that he 
was talking to them. He was like a ventrilo- 
quist : you could see that he was getting to peo- 



The Diplomat Wins. 67 

pie, but of emotion his countenance showed 
none. He turned up late that night and said 
that he had failed. The Bigger Man then 
promised him a berth, anyway. When he 
came on board finally he had somewhere round- 
ed up a bunch of booze to pay for his passage. 
He said nothing, but beamed benignly. 

We were off at last — the A. P. man, the 
Judge, the Bigger Man and myself — and 
anchored thirty hours later in Chefoo harbor. 
Ensued twenty-four hours of diabolic hurry, 
laying in coal, chow, engine room supplies and 
signing a skipper. The last was the worst. 

McDonnell had not yet shown up, and a 
wire from him declared the quest hopeless. I 
had taken tip of one Perkis, in Shanghai, the 
best man then idle, so repute said, on the coast, 
but he was not due Chefooside for another 
fortnight and in desperation I temporarily 
picked up an old salt named Meyer. The next 
morning as I came from the hotel my first 
skipper loomed up, big as life, and handed me 
one. 

*TVe been thinking this matter all over," 
said he, "talking with my wife and arranging 
my affairs, until I quite see my way clear to 



68 The Events Man. 

take on your job permanently, at the price you 
offered it to McDonnell — $500 a month." 

"You'd be a pretty skipper/' said I, "for a 
picnic party in Bearfoot Lake, but this is war." 

"Now, don't throw Korea in my face," said 
he, "that's the worst coast in the East and I'll 
admit I was green, but I know China side and 
Port Arthur side like a book." 

I don't believe he has yet recovered from the 
blow I dealt him when I said the skipper was 
already signed. To this day they repeat his 
slanders in the lantern shops. 

Meyer was worn and weary and weak, but he 
was a man. He came on deck that afternoon 
with all his worldly belongings slung over his 
shoulder in a Japanese blue handkerchief. In 
his other hand he carried a wooden case hold- 
ing a sextant and chronometer. That he 
walked upright and showed behind his eyes the 
light of intellect were the only signs that he 
was a man. His face was not a face at all, but 
a sort of parchment slab that had been deeply 
written on, soaked and dried till the ink all 
ran. His hands were not hands, but gnarled 
chunks of flesh slung claw-wise from hairy 
arms, and his legs were so bowed that he 



The Diplomat Wins. 69 

waddled like a duck. His old head constantly 
rolled from side to side as does a bear's in cap- 
tivity, and his toothless gums forever munched 
and munched. His vocabulary was limited to 
a dozen words, all monosyllables. He had 
been wrecked twenty times, in all parts of the 
world, twice up north after whale, and had 
been frozen and thawed out, frozen and thawed 
out past human endurance. But he was game 
at his post. Once his feet touched the bridge 
he never came down. I found him one night 
in port sleeping under the wheel-house bench. 
He had been thirty-eight hours on duty. I 
woke him up and he apologized, pretended he 
had been down on his hands and knees to look 
for the binnacle nub that had fallen. At first 
I thought him drunk — but no, he had been 
without ship for two seasons and the bridge 
was his bride. 

We had quite a row — the Bigger Man and 
I — over the next destination. I was for put- 
ting up to Newchwang, which everybody said 
the Japanese were about to take and where the 
Russians had just declared martial law. He 
was for running to Pekin after color, atmo- 
sphere and other vegetarian diet beloved by 



70 The Events Man. 

writers of reputation. My taste was for 
strong meat, blended of blood and smoke. We 
wrangled, but finally decided for Newchwang 
first, then for Pekin. 

So to Newchwang we were bound the second 
day at twelve p. m. Two correspondents were 
booked to go with us, but they failed at the last 
minute and I weighed anchor on time, already 
sniffing action. The Judge still clung to the 
Fawan. He had rapidly canvassed Chefoo 
and had found his reward yet postponed, so he 
volunteered that he would accompany us in 
the hope that he might in Newchwang come 
into his natural inheritance. He had some 
extraordinary proposition for condensed milk 
in flaked tins to submit to the Russians, and 
was so bland I could not say no. Moreover, 
he was just the proper man to smile at the right 
period in a joke, so along he went, smiling 
benignly. I wish that no one would think I 
slander the Judge's memory, for although 
when I knew him he was always about to, and 
had not yet quite landed, I have since learned 
that he finally did land — and bought a new suit. 

As we pulled anchor the harbour launch came 
out and handed us a cable dup. from Newch- 



The Diplomat Wins. 71 

wang which read: "Martial law has been de- 
clared. No ships are to pass into the inner har- 
bor without permission of harbor authorities. 
All ships must anchor at Buoy No. 5 on the east 
spit and there await inspection. Any ship 
passing beyond, without orders will be sunk 
by mines or the forts." 

Have you ever seen the coast of China where 
it flings its yellow bluffs north into the Pechili? 
It lies there stark under the glare of sun, un- 
redeemed by sight or sound, joyless with the 
naked mint of mother earth, heaved out of the 
primeval Mongol, slant-eyed and gaunt with 
Tartar might, as godless a theatre of war as 
ever slipped out of the Great Hand! Earth 
slides down and flakes constantly away with 
the inpounding of ceaseless breakers and the 
resultant chop-chop far into the deep is thick 
and rheumish as an o'erripe egg. Well are 
China waters named The Yellow Sea! 

The Fawan early struck her gait there, with 
old Meyer on the bridge. Before twilight we 
had cut the neck from the gulf and, with our 
glasses, could see the Liaotung. Our curi- 
osity was scant rewarded, for dark falls rapidly 
in those latitudes at that time of the year. It 



/^2 The Events Man. 

was the end of March, with spring's earhest 
health blow tickling us under our overcoats. 
As we approached the promontory around 
which lay Port Arthur, I grew excited with 
the nearness to the great drama. Just beyond 
us lay that tip of Russian steel, nub of the 
empire's reach into the Pacific, which for nine 
months was yet to gloriously withstand the 
pounding of Togo from without and the as- 
saulting of Nogi from within. As our triple 
expansion chugged on and on I grew weighty 
with the sober business and, for the first time, 
awed with a sense of the terrors primed by 
man. 

Then suddenly a flame shot into the water 
at our feet, reached over and bathed us in 
molten light and I gasped out with fright. 
The Chinks on the deck below huddled in 
against the winch and the yellow of their faces 
turned sick and sour under white horror. 
Dazzling, insolent, calm and mighty into the 
vault of night stretched that shaft, thinner and 
thinner grown as it reached its hilt, hid in the 
nether darkness out of the unknown. Thus 
the Lord must have come to Sinai to sear 
primeval wisdom into the soul of the prophet, 



The Diplomat Wins. 73 

for it was beyond the gift of man, that blazing- 
devil licking us with titanic tongue. Then 
slowly, insolently, calmly it moved its ma- 
jestic way across the waters, w^hile the bleared 
visages of the yellow boys below glimmed, 
the winch went out, and a faint ripple of 
weak laughter from the benign Judge flick- 
ered over the deep waters like a sick sunbeam 
into hell. The searchlight from the Liaotishan 
promontory had looked us over and not found 
us worth a shot. 

To the north we went stealthily on our way. 
I felt as on a morning police beat when a fly 
cop douses you with a glim, tilts up your chin 
with his rough palm for a square look in the 
eye, snaps the shutter and walks on, leaving 
you to rail at law and wonder where conscience 
sleeps. As we continued on our course there 
came out frequently from behind a deep shad- 
ow, or blaring into the cobalt stillness miles 
ahead, or other miles astern, still other shafts 
of insolent light. Then I realized that every 
square fathom of water within twenty miles of 
the coast was sleuthed by those sleepless senti- 
nels. Port Arthur was on guard, her nine 
months' vigil begun. I felt — how shall I say — 



74 The Events Man. 

for the first time the reaHty of war. I have 
since seen what men call war — scientific butch- 
ery, shots, smoke, groans, agony, death in every 
frightful form — but I cannot say that ever 
again was I brought up standing to be thrust 
upon my knees as I was before that phalanx of 
searchlights on the Liaotung. 

Ofif the bar at Newchwang the next day we 
found many steamers jiggling around, waiting 
the tide that they might float over. Old Meyer, 
pleased to show his seamanship, poked the 
Fawan's nose through all the craft, clung to 
the main channel and we slipped through 
the outer roadstead, the first vessel in. As we 
passed up to the east spit there came down the 
first merchanter of the year. It was April 
fool's day. The ice had just broken up, and, 
as we anchored at 2 p. m., a light snow com- 
menced falling. I expected to find a harbor 
launch to greet us and eagerly scanned the 
channel with my glasses, but all was bare ex- 
cept for the lone merchant, drawing the limit 
with beancake and oil. 

Presently, with the rising of the tide, The 
Newchwang, a B & S boat, came over and ran 
in ahead of us. I saw it was but a shrewd 



The Diplomat Wins. 75 

scheme to graft first inspection, so we slipped 
anchor and gave them a full half mile berth. 
We had no more than again come to anchor- 
age than a launch could be seen wending its 
way down the river. With my glasses I found 
her flying the white, blue and red administra- 
tive Russian flag. As she loomed up the decks 
could be seen alive with big, rough men in 
astrakan shakos and mud colored clothes, all 
carrying bayoneted guns and all apparently 
aching to stick those bayonets into someone. 
Not since the previous fall had any of them 
had a bath. It was this latter evident fact 
that caused me to protest when their chief, a 
Mephistopheles-appearing chap in frock whisk- 
ers and Ascot mustache, came aboard followed 
by a dozen of the pirates. 

"You cannot bring those men on this boat," 
I shouted. 

"Why?" he asked, quizzically, cynically. 

"Because this ship is under the British flag. 
You can come on with officers under side arms, 
but the law says that to board a neutral ship 
in neutral waters, vi ef armis, unless she re- 
sists search or is proven to have contraband on 
board will be regarded by the aggrieved gov- 



^6 The Events Man. 

ernment as a hostile act." I clattered it off 
to him, for I was well law fed. He understood 
English, looked at me with a cold pitiful stare, 
as though to ask me from what kindergarten I 
had just stepped and came on, followed by his 
huskies with their bayonets. 

"Here," I yelled, ''your officers are all right, 
but no soldiers. If you bring them on I shall 
appeal to Great Britain for redress." 

"We don't care that for the British flag," he 
answered, snapping his fingers in my face as he 
passed on down the deck, followed by five or 
six plain-clothes men and some marines. I 
was brushed aside, as the comedian is when the 
hero enters after changing his shirt. 

Mephistopheles went for Meyer who had the 
ship's papers. The old man was for holding 
on to them and stood parleying a long time, 
mumbling, groaning, chewing his dilapidated 
gums and shifting from one bow leg to the 
other. He hated the Russians and looked at 
the humiliation of this boarding party as be- 
yond despair. Still, time had been when a 
company of Cossacks had caught him up the 
Amur and tortured him within an inch of his 
life. A jagged scar down his left forearm 



The Diplomat Wins. JJ 

and a deep crease in his parchment face told 
of that agony, so when Mephistopheles mo- 
tioned two of the mud-clothed soldiers to search 
him the old man dug into his bosom and pro- 
duced the papers. They proved nothing. Then 
began a comprehensive and conscientious 
search. 

Merely to have seen that search you would 
have known it was part of the red tape of the 
Russian empire. A year later in Petersburg 
I followed another Mephistopheles around all 
day while he got twenty-seven signatures to 
the release for my revolver and then wrote up 
the affair under the caption, "How Russia lost 
the War." The story hit, and I might have 
put Mephistopheles out of business that mo- 
ment with dire predictions, had I only thought, 
as it was, I stood back with the Judge where 
he was benignly smiling, near the taffrail, in- 
terested but not concerned. 

They mustered the crew and went through 
the pockets and down the boot legs of each man. 
They went through every cabin and pulled out 
all the chow chests. They pawed over the coal 
and looked into the furnaces, examined all the 
stokers' rooms, pried up the plates of the engine 



yS The Events Man. 

room and examined the keel, went for'ard to 
the wheel house, ousted the charts and then 
aft to the water tanks. They were evidently 
surprised to find no one in the water tanks and 
for a long time considered the advisability of 
pumping the water out to see if a spy might be 
concealed in the bottom, but gave that up, and 
came away palpably disappointed. 

Meanwhile the two Japanese boys — mine 
and the Bigger Man's — showed up and Meph- 
istopheles beamed with guttural joy. Caught 
at last! Cromarty at that moment beckoned 
me and suggested, in a stage whisper, that I 
secure the papers held by the boys. I went 
into the cabin where all were assembled — Russ, 
Japs, Chinks and the Judge together — walked 
up to the boys and asked for all the papers they 
possessed. They handed a bunch to me, which 
I stuck in my overcoat pockets. The officers 
being outside and my action so direct no one 
questioned it. Then I tossed my overcoat 
aside on my sofa, and walked about hands in 
pockets. Presently the officers came in and all 
were searched. Nothing doing ! 

The next day I burned up all those papers 
and found among them the tow and tinder of 



The Diplomat Wins. 79 

Frank Treboni's assininity. Treboni was the 
Bigger Man's boy and was one of those indus- 
trious apes, who, Hke the ever busy woodchuck, 
must burrow, burrow always, though ever after 
nothing but a reputation for industry. He had 
filled a common pocket diary full of senseless 
stuff about location of rocks along the Chefoo 
side and up Port Arthur way — mere vagrant 
scribbles with amateur charts' and fool dia- 
grams just to prove to himself that he had his 
eyes open. We would have been ruined earlier 
had those panned on the search. But we were 
ruined as it was by Treboni. 

The unsuccessful search over, Mephisto- 
pheles told us we would have to wait while the 
other ships were gone through and that then 
he would return for us in person. According- 
ly the afternoon slipped away while he con- 
tinued his quest and we saw the merchant ships, 
one by one, stand in up the channel, while we, 
first over the bar, were held for orders. As 
dusk came down the launch threw a rope to us 
and we started to tow her in, the officers with 
Mephistopheles at their head meanwhile board- 
ing us for drinks and biscuit. 

It is a fifteen mile stretch up the river to 



8o The Events Man. 

Newchwang, all the way the town being visible 
in the distance, as you wind in and out through 
the sand bars. Half way in the Fawan 
grounded and the launch directly after. So 
we could only lay for the tide to float us off. 
As we lay there the big Newchwang which had 
tried to round our head in the afternoon, again 
steamed lordly past us and plumped full speed 
on into the bar ahead. It was then high tide 
of the full moon in April, the equinox, or in 
other words, the highest water of any moment 
in the year, so that the Newchwang sunk deeper 
and deeper into the mud until, three days later, 
it took two steamers and an army of coolies to 
dig her out. She sent word the next day for 
us to come and tow, but we lost a chance to 
clear $10,000 salvage, for we received the 
message at the same hour in which we were 
told that we were prisoners of His Imperial 
Majesty, Nicholas II. 



HELD AS SPIES. 



CHAPTER V. 

Held as spies we harass Kuropatkin, lose our anchors, 
but, thanks to John Hay, escape with the honors of war. 

The Fawan was under the British flag, and 
she lay in a neutral port. Still there we were, 
prisoners of war in the hands of the Russians ! 
And why? Spies! 

I went straight to the British Consul and 
demanded the aid of his government. But he 
was a side-stepper, and already bluffed by the 
frock whiskers. He smiled patronizingly upon 
me, and in the most blase tone, wondered how 
I could possibly suspect he might help me. 

"Tell me this," I said, "Do you, or do you 
not recognize the right of Russia to declare 
martial law in Newchwang, the port of a neu- 
tral power?" 

I saw the scorn leap from his lip at that, but 
waiting for an answer, I hurled at him, "And 
in that neutral port do you recognize her right 
to seize a British ship?" 

Again the blase smile, the serene shoulder 
shrug. "I feel called upon to answer no such 
question," he naively replied. 



84 The Events Man. 

Thereupon I started for the cable office to 
stir up the international incident which then re- 
sulted. I found the American Consul Miller, 
a royal chap. He offered to do all he could, 
and together we started for the wire. 

Our way led us along the wharf, but as we 
sped there, our pace was clogged by a crowd 
of idling hotel hangers-on. Jostling, whisper- 
ing, laughing, they motioned one another to the 
center of attention, which lay mid-stream, 
swinging with the tide. My eyes followed the 
direction of general interest. It was our tug 
boat. Ah! thought I, the Fawan has at last 
received her just due of universal admiration ! 
Just then a whiff of conversation brushed my 
ear, and sent me chill with apprehension. 
From the nearest spectator, without a formal 
by-your-leave, I snatched a pair of glasses. 
Yes — that awed whisper spoke true. There 
were armed guards pacing her decks. The 
Fawan had been formally seized. 

Miller and I hastened to the consulate and he 
rang up his friends in the Russian provisional 
government. Shortly he turned from his desk 
with a sober smile and said: "Nothing to- 
night, my boy. I hoped to help you, for I have 



Held as Spies. 85 

some good friends here, but the case has gone 
beyond them. The Fawan has been referred 
from the civil authorities at Newchwang to 
the divisional authorities at Liaoyang." 

That night a rumor came to us. We heard 
that Kuropatkin, Alexieff and the divisional 
commander had met at Taschiachaou to confer 
over the disposition of the Fawan, It was then 
I first felt utterly certain the Russians would 
lose the war. If they had no more perspective 
than to take seriously our silly Fawan, what 
would they do confronted by marshalled Japan- 
ese divisions. Yet I was not so wise as I 
thought. There proved reason for our magni- 
tude. 

The affair was now serious. We followed 
Miller's advise and went back to the boat on 
his promise that he would stir things up in the 
morning and get us out. Meanwhile the prob- 
lem of the Judge had startled us. How were 
we to account for him ? Officer he plainly was 
not, and we had denied being a common carrier. 
Finally there was but one thing to do. We did 
it — declared him a correspondent of the Chi- 
cago Daily Nezvs and furnished him with 
proper credentials. 



86 The Events Man. 

Accordingly, the next day, while Miller was 
keeping the wires hot, we called on the best 
people in Newchwang, including the civil gov- 
ernor, who had some ladies in the house, ac- 
companied everywhere by the benign and ap- 
preciative Judge. He sat in the parlors, brick- 
layer retired, with his hands spread out on his 
knees like palm leaf fans, and followed the con- 
versation with that unctuous appreciation ex- 
pected of one in the know. 

The United States gunboat Helena was lying 
in harbor and I looked to her to protect us. I 
spoke to Miller about it and he said she would 
undoubtedly remain as the captain had been 
told our predicament. The next morning, 
however, we woke to find the Helena gone. 
We were now in a Chinese port under the 
British flag under Russian martial law, mo- 
mentarily expecting a Japanese attack and with 
the last hope of American protection gone. 

That same night another disaster overtook 
us. Old Meyer, not onto the anchoring in 
ice, had left too little slack and the ice came 
down in thousand-ton chunks, slightly smashed, 
drifted into the Fawan's nose and snapped off 
both our anchors with eighty fathoms of cables. 



Held as Spies. 87 

From then on we held our place only by turning 
the helm alternately up and down, so she would 
be always against the tide, and by keeping the 
engines constantly in revolution. 

A day passed ominously. The second morn- 
ing we learned the real why of that conference 
of the powers at Taschiachao — we learned that 
we were not so flippant a pawn in the affairs 
of nations, after all. 

That fool Treboni did it. He was the sort 
of Japanese that is afraid he will not be taken 
seriously — a climber, one of the exotic growths 
of the new empire. When questioned, he in- 
dignantly denied he was a servant, said he was 
a student. That of course, put all in the soup. 

The Russians, led by the frock whiskers, 
promptly framed up a beautiful tale. Treboni 
was a captain spy, and my boy a sergeant. 
We had brought them in under the cover of an 
ostensible dispatch boat, to make soundings, 
locate mines, and estimate garrison and forts. 
On this report Togo would attack. 

What a pickle ! No wonder Kuropatkin and 
Alexieff found it worth their while. Miller 
brought the news. He was grave, and tried 
to conceal the worst under a tone of simulated 



88 The Events Man. 

concern. From all the chaff he passed out, I 
could remember only: 

"You two boys will undoubtedly be shot 
as spies and I cannot guarantee your own 
lives. A mob is forming in the streets and I 
can no longer protect you !" 

I suggested we go to the consulate, and at 
that Miller became extremely alarmed. "We 
might resist for a while there,'' he said, "but in 
the end we would lose our lives, and they would 
kill him, too. Even my personal influence with 
the authorities could not save you," he added, 
"if the mob once takes it into its head that you 
are the agent of Togo." 

The Judge, alias bricklayer, alias war corre- 
spondent, hearing all this was still benign, 
though he did admit under cross-examination, 
that he had not found the expected openings in 
Newchwang, and that he was quite ready to 
return to Chefoo, if he got the chance. I 
asked Miller for advice. 

The consul urged us to go to the British 
gunboat Spiegel. "There the Cossacks will 
not molest you," said he, "and if the mob at- 
tacks it can be fought off with the quick-firers. 



Held as Spies. 89 

If you stay in the consulate, or go back to your 
boat, you are done for — they'll kill you." 

That made me hot! An American citizen 
in a neutral port — on. straight business — and 
in danger of his life ! It didn't take me as long 
to make up my mind as it took Kuropatkin. 

"Can you get a wire to my editor?" I asked 
Miller. He thought he could, and I dictated: 
"Our boys likely to be shot as spies. Our per- 
sons in danger. Wire Secretary of State to 
have Russian Government order us released." 

While that was traveling around the world 
we spent a day hardly to be designated as 
frivolous. The Judge was still in evidence, 
interested but not disturbed, though he was in 
that list of suspected spies which Kuropatkin 
was supposed to be at that moment fingering. 

Meanwhile my blessed editor, Victor Law- 
son, had done the proper thing. He had wired 
John Hay, who sent to the American Ambassa- 
dor, McCormick, in Petersburg, this message : 
"Secure immediate release of correspondents 
held in Newchwang. If necessary see the 
Czar in person." 

It did not prove necessary to see the Czar in 
person, but whatever juggling he went through 



90 The Events Man. 

among the bureaux of Petersburg, McCormick 
turned the trick in record time. It was but 
twelve hours from the time of the fiHng of my 
dispatch when a miserable orderly handed me 
an order. 

"The Fawan is at liberty," it read, "sail with- 
in twenty-four hours." 

Here the Bigger Man turned up his senti- 
mental side., He would not leave the boys, and 
swore some melodramatic oath about constancy 
and loyalty. I think he would have enjoyed 
the excitement of a shooting party with the mob 
as host — had he been safely off-side. 

But Miller kept his sense. "Your only 
chance is to go," said he. "You can't save the 
boys by staying, and you will surely lose the 
boat, if not your lives. Should Togo attack 
while you are here, nothing could save you, not 
even that pink imperial order. The streets are 
rife with rumors of your suspected mission, 
and to-night may see the breaking of restraint. 
You go at dawn. I'll guarantee the boys. If 
they can be saved, I'll save them." 

He did save them — dear loyal Miller — but 
that is not part of this story. 

We sailed at dawn. As we sneaked past the 



Held as Spies. 91 

forts I felt conscience stricken as one caught 
with the goods on. Those frowning guns fol- 
lowed us like the deadly finger in a cigar sign, 
for fifteen miles in and out of that winding 
river. The soldiers stood on the ramparts, at 
present arms, as we passed. Our whole crew 
was lined along the decks as the Fawan sped 
on. Along the tafifrail lounged the Judge, 
looking interested but not disturbed. 

Just beyond range of the last fort, a great 
volley of shots burst aft. I grasped my re- 
volver and sneaked along the deck house. Was 
it mutiny or attack. There, gathered about the 
winch, stood a crowd of Chinks exploding fire- 
crackers ! 



ANNOINTED 



CHAPTER VI. 

The Japanese fleet first holds me up, I convey my 
Chief to the Yalu, bid him farewell on a venturesome 
journey and am fairly launched on my career of 
typhoons and battles. 

There could be no more monkey business 
with the Fawan when operation cost three hun- 
dred and thirty mex a day. Up to this time 
she had not paid for the crew's chow bill in 
news-getting service, for the big story that 
might have gone out of Newchwang I dared 
not send because the lives of our boys were 
still in danger there and no risk could be taken 
in deserving the reputation we already had — 
that of spies. So I was heartily glad when 
orders came to proceed with the utmost dis- 
patch to Chemulpo and pick up my chief. 

In fee simple the three of us represented the 
essential component parts of the modern news- 
paper — the projecting man, the doing man, and 
the writing man. The latter, the Bigger Fel- 
low, the ever ready with nimble word to turn 
a phrase around an idea, to flay with quip and 
sally the froth of the world's » events, I left in 
Tien-Tsin — and left for aye. Now I, the do- 



g6 The Events Man. 

ing man, was bound hotfoot to meet my chief, 
and there, I fondly hoped, to be finally unleash- 
ed to that great game which was the very pith 
and core of my eye's apple. 

First, I must have a skipper. My initial 
attempt had been a mucker. MacDonnell the 
prize, had been bought by the Americans. Old 
Meyer had the nerve, but was without the 
savvy, and was a bit shy on youth. So up 
turned Perkis from Shanghai, much to my re- 
lief. Perkis was forty-seven, short, stout, with 
a red face, black mustache, close hair, and — 
without speech. I was for teaching him the 
sign language until I found that it was discre- 
tion, not paralysis, that held his tongue. For 
eighteen years crack skipper of the star coast 
line he had but two months before passed them 
the go-bye in a huff, for Perkis was a gentle- 
man, came from a good family in England, in 
fact, received his regular monthly allowance 
from home, but was a navigator by choice, an 
adventurer of the high seas. Liquor-tapped 
one day, after eighteen years' faithful service, 
he fell from the gang-plank to the wharf and 
sprained his leg. The company did not dis- 
charge him; they gave him six months' rest 



Annointed. 97 

leave on full pay, but the manner of giving was 
an insult. He resigned on the spot. It was 
not the money that lured him to me, but the 
game. 

"It's a kid trying to put on side and run the 
show," said he of me as he turned up on the 
bridge that afternoon. I read the words and 
the inflection in his eye. So I followed him to 
the saloon before we started, unsealed a fresh 
bottle, and talked straight. 

"Captain Perkis," said I, "you're the skipper 
of this boat, and I want to start square with 
you. The law reads that the minute you weigh 
anchor you're the commander. Now I don't 
dispute that. Its best so. I'm here only for 
conference, but I hope you'll feel we're all out 
for the same thing, that we are spending 
money and taking risks, not for the credit of 
any one man, but for the common end — to get 
stuff for the Chicago Daily News," I told 
him of my first skipper. "But," I added, "you 
are a different man. I have full confidence in 
you. You're not an underling. You and I 
together are taking a common risk. I hope 
you will confer with me, and I want you to 
advise me. You're the man of sea, savvy, and 



98 The Events Man. 

I look to you for success." That eye changed. 
He grasped my hand, and went back to the 
bridge — silent. Old Meyer shipped as first 
mate. With Cromarty, Meyer and Perkis I 
felt as if the Fawan had survived her trial 
cruise. Perkis was no buttinski, for when I 
invited the harbour people in to drinks he stuck 
to the bridge, but I sent a boy up for him and 
then motioned him to the head of the table. 
After that he stood pat through every demand 
I made on him — with one exception — until we 
docked finally at Tongku. 

We left the Judge at Chefoo, and for the last 
timQ bade good-bye to his benign smile waiting 
patiently to come into its natural inheritance. 
As we faded out to sea, I still caught sight of 
his lank form casting after us a sad farewell, 
interested but not disturbed. He had ex- 
hausted every port on the China coast and had 
at last drifted back to the birth-place of as 
many lies as ever watered the desert of un- 
intelligence surrounding a great war. It was 
hard to part, but he was too great a luxury for 
the quest we were on. 

Perkis was O. K. and beside him, on the 
bridge, I received my first practical lessons in 



Annointed. 99 

navigation. It was very beautiful to see the 
law and order of it slip off under his supple 
mind. There was the chart with its parallel 
course, pretty as a new-laid road on a survey- 
or's drawing, the patent log beside, and the 
good ship bounding across that mouth of gulf, 
with dangerous Korea looming beyond, the 
Korea on which I split my skipper's wisdom 
tooth. But, with his chart and course, my 
bully companion now played the northwest 
rock for me out of the mists as the photog- 
rapher draws a landscape with developer out 
of a dry plate. It was a joy, indeed, to find 
the angles and the channel coming straight as 
a Q. E. D. 

The Chief was not at Chemulpo, and there 
were no instructions. He had passed on his 
way to the north, had touched, not landed, and 
was now well on his way to that first decisive 
test of arms between the white soldier and the 
yellow across the mud flats of the Yalu. This 
was all I could learn. I was up in the air 
again — no instructions, no army pass, all ways 
barred, green and alone. But I was keen to 
follow Yaluwards. We were lying a good 
bittish out of harbour when the laute called 
there was a white man aftside. 



lOO The Events Man. 

Presently he arrived, indicating by word of 
mouth that he was a good fellow, and radiating 
the charm he evidently intended to convey from 
many rotundities with good capon lined. "My 
name is Herbert,'' said he, "my father used to 
be Governor. Perhaps you've heard of him. 
Everybody's heard of him, and most every- 
body's heard of me. You never heard. Ah, 
well, you're young. Its forgiven. The fact 
is, I'm out here to see the war. Always see 
war, if there's one to be seen. I'm the only 
officer in the regular army who has seen each 
of the past four wars." 

"So?" queried I, "but are you aware that the 
coast sports some hundreds odd with the same 
mission ?" 

"But," and he touched me familiarly on the 
arm, "is the coast lined with hundreds who 
have letters from the President and the Secre- 
tary of State? Is the coast lined with hun- 
dreds marked in red tape as the authorized 
bearer of official dispatches? Is the coast 
lined with hundreds who could pick you out of 
any scrape as easily as a king can knight a rag- 
picker?" 

He showed me the papers. They were of 



Annointed. ioi 

the best — from Oyama, Kodama, and all the 
rest. First of all, was one naming him official 
dispatch bearer of the American Government 
from Pekin to Seoul. He was wearing the 
undress khaki uniform of the American army 
officer, without the insignia. He put his hand 
in his pocket and drew forth the brass buttons, 
the bronze insignia and the collar piece that 
showed him to be a staff colonel. "These," 
said he, *'I can slip on in a moment's notice if 
you are overhauled." 

"But are they yours ?" said I. 

"Of course,'' he replied, "but I travel in- 
cognito." He passed his eye across our cabin- 
way, investigated the bunks, climbed to the 
bridge, asked a few pertinent questions. 
"Well," said he at last, "this isn't a bad tub. 
She'll do, and you may have some interesting 
experiences. I don't mind if I go along." So 
I nabbed him, with his Oyama screed. 

The great Bennett Burleigh, king of war 
correspondents, survivor of thirty-six cam- 
paigns, boarded the Fawan the next afternoon, 
puffing and blowing. "Look here, boy," he 
cried to me, "give us that story. It's a good 
story, a good story — that Newchwang affair. 



102 The Events Man. 

Give it me! Give it me! What an outrage! 
What a damned outrage!" I smiled as he 
jotted the words down in shorthand. He 
caught me. 

"It's no jest," said he. "If it will give you 
any comfort, I may tell you that I have fully 
investigated this case and I am going to have 
that consul removed. Yes sir, removed! A 
word from me will do it." Thus he went 
puffing and blowing over the side of the vessel, 
and I could hear his hot exclamations ringing 
from the sampan clear to shore. A year later 
I again visited Newchwang and again bowed 
to the same British consul, promoted to Tien- 
tsin, but the puffing and blowing of Bennett 
Burleigh resounded from one end of the East 
to the other for many a week. 

We stood off next morning for Chinnampo, 
bearing, besides our direct mission, two ob- 
jects : ( I ) a Chinese order on some merchants 
above Wiju to carry fifteen hundred silk 
cocoons to Chef 00 at three dollars apiece, (2) 
the official bearer of dispatches from Uncle 
Sam's government service at Pekin to the other 
branch at Seoul. 

Up the coast of Korea, which there resembles 



Annointed. 103 

the coast of Maine beyond Bar Harbour, we 
sighted on the horizon a smudge of smoke 
which the skipper declared to be that of the 
Japanese fleet, but it was too far out for us to 
chase. Besides, I had important engagements 
up Ping Yang inlet, for there, I thought, lay 
the Chief. So we hit the Fawan up for a speed 
test and Cromarty gauged the revolutions to 

115. 
At 3:00 in the afternoon the inlet hove in 

sight, with a picket ship astride the mouth, 

with her funnel puffing lazy blue wreaths into 

the fresh spring air. We received her signal, 

"B D N" I think it was, and looked directly in 

our book. 

"Abandon your ship!" read "B D N." 
Perkis looked at me in consternation and I at 
him for relief. 

*'It's what Togo signalled the Kow Shing 
before he sank her in the harbour of Chemulpo 
during the China war," said Perkis, with 
clenched teeth. "What shall I do?" 

"Put her head on for the inlet," said I. 

We went on. "Will they sink us?" rose to 
my lips. "In broad day, with no hostile sign, 
and no chance to escape ?" The Colonel stood 



I04 The Events Man. 

with arms folded, chuckling, "a fine experi- 
ence." He was figuring, I presume, how it 
would look in his memoirs. 

At length a boat pushed off from the picket 
and as we took our kow-towing subaltern 
aboard we learned the difficulty. They were 
using the new international signal code; we 
had the old. The signs they used were entirely 
unintelligible to us. The officer had passed an 
examination in English — th^t was all. He 
opened his mouth, but no words came forth, 
only guttural sounds. He went back, dug up 
someone else. We parleyed, assured him the 
pass and the Chief was waiting up the inlet, 
sandbagged him with American bluff — and the 
next signal read: "You may proceed." 

Soon we picked up the fleet. It was all of 
third and fourth class boats, nothing over one 
funnel. The flagship refused to let us pass 
and the Colonel produced his papers. The 
effect was magical. We received an official 
apology, an official kowtow, and an official 
escort. The Miyaka, a month later mined and 
sent plump to the bottom at Dalny, steamed up 
the inlet majestically ahead of us, showing the 
way in. 



Annointed. 105 

At last the Chief! He produced my pass, 
primed me with the ins of Tokyo bureaudom 
and the outs of army etiquette and hurried me 
off to the Japanese Consul. The Consul said 
we had no rights in the inlet. We swore that 
a British dispatch boat had been in. He 
swore she had not been in. We wired to 
Tokyo and Washington for equal favours, and, 
though we were hustled out that day, the 
Britisher got hustled off with equal smartness 
the next attempt she made. 

Chinnampo was a sight. You have seen the 
circus arrive at 4:00 o'clock of a summer's 
morning — the long trains puffing in, the chaos 
of shouts, the wilderness of luggage, the melee 
of animals, the whirlwind of orders, the 
avalanche of trucks, beasts and men. One 
hour all is ruin and dismay; the small boy 
thinks the circus has gone smash, that nothing 
less than a week can ever bring order out of 
that. When — presto! the caravan moves, the 
animals extricate, the riders assemble, the 
clowns kowtow, the tent grows as if beckoned 
by a magician's wand, the procession moves 
promptly at 10:00 in the forenoon, gay, bril- 
liant, majestic. The show has come to life. 



io6 The Events Man. 

So it was at Chinnampo, the base of the first 
Imperial army that balmy April morning when 
the shore of Ping Yang inlet breathed the 
tenderness of spring. Transports by the dozen 
had dumped every imaginable army supply 
roughly on the beach. It looked as if an in- 
vader had been flat upon their heels and they 
had had barely time to fly. For two miles back 
the stuff was piled high — telegraph wire strung 
in huge bales, carts in flat, boarded bundles 
of axles, shafts in high crates, gun barrels 
unmounted and rolling in the mud, canvas 
bellied from the drought, red cross supplies in 
striped boxes ranging deep and sudden through 
the hopeless tangle, and, loose among all, in- 
extricable lines of coolies, with here and there 
a spanking khaki coat. To my eye, illiterate 
in war's superb mechanism, there had been a 
collapse and the army of the Yalu would never 
get its freight. 

Thus, in the dawn as saffron, died the Ping 
Yang hills ! Toward sundown, as I came from 
the Consul's mud room up a dirty street, I 
glanced into the haze of the military road wind- 
ing north through the hills of surpassing 
beauty. There, on the broad highway, in 



Annointed. 107 

unison and strength, lay the chaos of a few 
hours back. The carts had been assembled, 
the guns mounted, the stores packed and now 
on toward Manchuria was rolling this relent- 
less juggernaut, the War Machine. I could 
see lifted in miniature on the highroad every 
branch of the service. The khaki surtouts of 
the infantry trudged ahead, a tape of yellow 
lain on the fresh green. The scarlet cavalry 
pranced alongside three mounted batteries 
whose muzzled gun mouths looked down upon 
us with calm and hidden might. The tele- 
graph corps with jaunty tools and limber poles 
took up the trail steadily, as did the goose- 
stepped regulars on before. The commissary 
and the red cross filed behind, the reserve ani- 
mals covered the rear and, in behind even them, 
I could see the sun splitting a farewell on the 
copper bottoms of the pontoon boats as they 
rested snug atop the pontoon wagons. My 
nerves thrilled. I was as a yearling brought 
for the first time to the pole. Though I knew 
not from experience the meaning of that curv- 
ing sea of faces round the Judge's stand, I felt 
strange delight and wonder stealing through 
my veins. 



io8 The Events Man. 

Off in the inlet swung the Hakui and the 

Sado, the sister ships of the Red Cross Society, 
as Hke as peas. They had just been painted a 
beautiful vermilion and white, the funnels 
bland as a whitewashed fence and the huge 
red cross standing out square and forceful. 
They slept there as pretty a picture as I ever 
saw away from the triangular course of the 
American cup race, and the Chief exclaimed: 
'What enormous boats ! Where can they ever 
dig up enough wounded to fill them? Each 
would swallow a regiment." Six months later 
I came back on the quarter deck of the Sado, 
sporting a red cross kimono, and there were ten 
more like us with anchor dropped in Ujina har- 
bour, and all were gunwale full of wounded. 
And there were another ten at sea. But that 
was after the Yalu had sunk into a skirmish be- 
fore the acaldemas of Liaoyang and the Sha-ho, 
of Tellissu and Port Arthur. 

"Now it's up to you to get me in front of the 
army," said the Chief, and I could see he was 
stirring my stumps. "The News has put it up 
to you and me. You take the fleet ; the army's 
mine. And we must skin the world on both 
branches of the service." Well, he did his 



Annointed. 109 

share all right. From the Yalu and from Liao- 
yang first blood over the field wire trickled 
from him; mine was the knell yet to ring for 
nine months through the sounding boards of 
two hemispheres — Port Arthur. 

It was for the Yalu we were bound the next 
morning. The Chief, in waiting to give me 
final instructions, had let the army and the 
correspondents get the star of him a hundred 
miles. Now he must overhaul, head them off 
and drop in on the flank near headquarters 
before the curtain rose on the momentous 
drama, tidings which the press of Christendom 
was hourly expecting. 

We hurried out of Ping Yang under a cloud 
of Japanese displeasure, for it was intended 
that no one should see the celerity of that 
famous landing, and we hauled up off the Yalu 
alarmed at — what? Nothing. There was 
simply nothing — no secondary base for which 
we looked eagerly and in vain. We thought 
there would be landing of supplies at Yong- 
am-pho, near the mouth of the river, but the 
place was as deserted and inhospitable as ever 
a Korean village could be — and that capacity 
is tremendous. There was no sign of war- 



no The Events Man. 

ship, no sign, even, of junks or fishing sam- 
pans — nothing but the dreary mud nonentity 
of the Yalu stretching vastly in the northwest. 
Even the river was invisible. It ought to come 
down there, the chart said, and Perkis assured 
us that it did, but for miles and miles there 
stretched only yellow and shoals, flat and 
profitless. We stood in the most interesting 
armies of two great empires were about to 
spot in the world, the Yalue, where the 
meet for their first duel — and could not find the 
spot. 

We might not return to Ping Yang. That 
way the picket had orders to stop or sink on 
sight. It was here the Chief showed his 
hand — one steady, wiry, tough. He forced 
the game and seized a junk. At length one 
was spotted sailing out of the mud to the North. 
Yes. There it stretched, a ribbon of lemon on 
the dreary ochre. We sent the dingy for the 
junk and brought the skipper off, grumbling 
and suspicious. 

He must put back with that junk up the 
shallows of the river and land the Chief with 
the Japanese army. He refused. He had 
been in Russian pay and he dare not look upon 



Annointed. 1 1 1 

the yellow faces. We cajoled. We offered 
money. His hire could not be paid. We 
threatened. Still he refused. Then we im- 
pressed. He should not leave the Fawan until 
he consented. Three hours of durance won 
him. With a sour face he led the way and 
I saw the Chief, his boy and his outfit piled 
over the side of the Fawan and speed in the 
dingy for the side of that piratical junk. In 
my heart I opposed the affair, but there was 
no word for me, a novice, to impose upon the 
veteran of eleven campaigns. 

"Fm not for this," said he. "It comes of 
the wild lust for news. Why am I of it — with 
a wife and child ? What a passing madness — 
this mushroom of our civilization!" 

I could not answer — I, sinful as a gambler 
caught with the goods. . There was no answer. 
It was the moment when a man goes on to a 
success in which his name is nil or to death; 
or, back to face the broken midstroke of his 
career. The old Chief — yet not so old — with 
his steady comfortable million at home and 
that sweet wife I knew so well — why did he go 
on ? Why do any of us go on ? 

I saw him rise above the gunwale of the 



112 The Events Man. 

junk. I saw the dingy return. I saw the 
lateen sails bend with the breeze and the bat- 
tered, runty nose stride toward the streak of 
lemon. Beyond, on one side lay the hostile 
Russians, on the other the inhospitable Japan- 
ese; on all sides the country slumbering lightly 
for the match which would set it into roaring, 
ghastly death, and with him a crowd of 
treacherous, unwilling Orientals of whose 
language or country he knew not word or lati- 
tude. He carried a Mauser automatic con- 
spicuously in his belt, and I said to myself that 
at least ten of the dogs would go under before 
they got him. But what would ten yellow 
lives be to one Chief like that! 

The junk looked like the prints of the Old 
Pinto as she left Lisbon in 149 1. As I saw the 
Chief looming, ever more distant, out of her 
sheets, I wondered how Columbus felt as he 
gazed his last on the old land from the deck 
of his caravel. At length the yellow swal- 
lowed him. The mud closed in all around. 
We turned the Fawafis nose to the South, I 
signaled "full speed ahead !" and went back to 
do his bidding — the snub on the mushroom ! 



AGAIN A CAPTIVE 



CHAPTER VII. 

An army at sea bursts upon us and goes out, 
the Chief escapes, I dawdle about Port Arthur, in- 
vite a destroyer out and get a shot across the bows. 

As we dropped down past Talienwan bound 
for Chefoo that night, there suddenly loomed 
Coney Island off our port bow. Coney 
Island! with its myriad of dancing lights in 
the dim vista, and Manhattan Beach beyond 
and all the dotted indent of the most friendly 
shore on earth straight to Far Rockaway ! In 
war the recruit says nothing, or next to noth- 
ing of home; the loom of love swims too mist- 
ily before, the scowl of mockery leers too 
heavily behind; but he thinks always, remem- 
bers everything. So I may confide in you that 
that night slipping down from the basalt Liao- 
tung, the Chief I fondly loved going to all but 
doom and I bound upon the sea of daring 
where he was the lighthouse to steer my course, 
I felt blue as — well, devils tempted me. Then 
Coney Island piercing the bowl of night with 
its thousand curious knowing scenes beckoning 
on drew me as oint of olives would an 
o'erroweled horse. Vanished the Yellow Sea, 



ii6 The Events Man. 

vanished forbidden Korea Bay! Was I in 
Asia or Columbus land? Sleeping or awake? 

"Captain!" I cried to Perkis. 

"Yes/' came the voice from my elbow. "A 
pretty sight, eh ?" 

"What! What!" I still gasped. 

"The lost fleet/' he said calmly, and I re- 
member wondering at his poise of character. 
Then I made it out — the regular glow, the 
electric twinkle of ships at sea. Fifteen miles 
away they must have been and broadside to in 
a string that would have reached from the 
Battery to the Tomb. 

"What fleet?" Still unawake, I peered 
ahead, the nether instincts gone, the superior 
alive. 

"Must be the transports of the second 
army — cleared Sasebo ten days ago — port un- 
known." 

God — for imagination! How simple! By 
all means the second army, and I, dull fool, lost 
in self, on the verge of stumbling past the pres- 
ent great mystery of the wary. 

"We must duck the lights and crawl nearer," 
I called to the skipper. 

"If you douse the masthead or side lights 



Again a Captive. 117 

you forego sea law and if they nab you it'll be 
a blockade runner taken/' he answered warily. 

"Then out with the port and haul in a few 
knots. We're hull down anyway, and the 
mast's ahead." 

As we swung in, home faded, and I felt am- 
bition about to come into its own. If what the 
skipper said panned, there lay but the watery 
expanse between the Fawan and Chefoo to 
land me the biggest story of the war so far. 
So distant was the possibility of this great coup 
that until the fleet crossed my physical vision 
it had not crossed the mental. If the fleet it 
was — and what else could it be? — there lay 
beyond me there in pantomine of Coney Is- 
land's gorgeous shows more than half a hun- 
dred ships with more than sixty thousand men, 
headed by Oku and his staff, accoutred as com- 
pletely as was that wild array I had seen but 
two days before, scattered along Ping Yang 
inlet. Well I knew how they had put to sea — 
with enough sampans on each transport to land 
all the troops thereon at once, athwart every 
for'ard davit a new launch fresh from Osaka 
with steam up, ready to tow the Machine 
ashore, and elsewhere every sail and button for 



ii8 The Events Man. 

the complete mobilization of an army. Afloat 
somewhere now that the world knew not they 
were hanging, as it were, in mid air, a Damo- 
clean sword above the Russian head, ready to 
drop at wireless touch the moment Kuroki 
struck. Had the first army been driven back, 
they would have smitten the Russian flank in- 
stantly from the upper bank of the Yalu. 
Kuroki a success this sublime machine of sixty 
thousand souls could be hurled at will, against 
Liaoyang, or upon the frightful heights of Port 
Arthur. This lightning coup in readiness, 
conceived of a master of thunderbolts, smote 
upon me alone first there in the darkness, the 
possibillity, the extent, the mystery, the sublime 
foresight awed me to silence. Then the news ! 
I was the only white, above a dozen few in 
Tokyo, the only man of any colour capable of 
whispering this stark wonderment. 

I called Cromarty. "How much coal in the 
bunkers?'' I asked. 

"Not above eight tons," said he. "Just 
enough to pull us nicely into Chefoo — if you 
don't loaf." 

"The devil," I cried. "Can't you lie to, 'till 



Again a Captive. 119 

morning? I must make sure. The beat is 
too big for chances." 

The skipper intervened. "You'll be nabbed 
sure/' said he, "and held till the show is over. 
Better push on now, if you want anything out 
of this deal.'' We had pulled in a bit and I 
could distinguish here and there, from four- 
masters, the strings of taffrail lights. No war- 
ships sport such elegance, and where, in that 
part of the world could one find sixty liners, 
slow down to four knots, ambling along a bar- 
ren coast, with no object but to kill time ? 

At that moment a northwest blow brought 
in the faint, welcome strains of far distant 
singing — the lilt and pause of battalions in 
evening song. "Nippon carte! Nippon carte! 
Rose marke ta !" "Onward Nippon ! Onward 
Nippon ! Russia defeated is !" The Ki-Mi-Ga- 
Yo clinched it. Who else but Jap dough-boys 
could sound that ringing melancholy as a 
gauge of battle? And what less than a bat- 
talion strong could boom it, strenuous and sad, 
across a dozen miles of sullen sea? 

"Put for Chef 00 at full speed," I said. 

The next day the Fawan began that series 
of telegrams which placed her on the bourses 



120 The Events Man. 

of Europe as the first scourge of the war's 
froth. Thanks to Burleigh's interest and our 
subsequent scoops, the tight Httle tug boat for 
months gave all the writers of London their 
first tips on the sea situation — and — alas! — 
turned all too much . of moment toward the 
Neva. No wonder that we met our fate, and 
that the Fawan was the last dispatch boat that 
will likely ever be heard from authoritatively in 
the conflicts of first-class powers. But of that 
anon! 

Putting out of Chefoo again the next day we 
again carried the Colonel. He was having 
such a good time he 'lowed he'd make another 
cruise. The adventure was to his liking, and, 
as he was good company, I was glad to take 
him along. We put up past the Liaotishan 
promontory for Thorntonhaven, hoping for an- 
other sight of that mysterious fleet. I had 
sent the cable of its identity and place, but par- 
ticulars of movements would now be good any 
time 'till it landed. We anchored in Thorn- 
tonhaven and went ashore in a new cutter I had 
taken on with four men. We could see wild 
goats along the ridges of the hills and I wanted 
to put a shot into one of them, but didn't dare 



Again a Captive. 121 

be gay with firearms just there and then. Some 
Chinks told us that about thirty vessels had 
anchored off shore the day before, lighters 
putting in for water. This was plainly the 
fleet, so I ordered nose ahead for the north 
again. I wanted to go back, not only for the 
fleet, but that I might again reach Tatinkow, 
on the other side of the Yalu, and give a last 
look for the Chief. He might fail utterly up 
the river and we had agreed on a white flag 
signal should he come back. 

Accordingly, all the way up I looked for a 
tablecloth to the junk mastheads. None 
showed up, though, not content with scrutiny, 
I overhauled and put the laute aboard every 
sail that passed us, to cross-question. We had 
but reached the mud flats again and felt the 
shoreless depths of ochre all about when I spied 
my first mine. We had been warned that the 
Russians had laid them well through the chan- 
nel and this first peep prepared me for what I 
was later to find, shoals and shoals of them 
lying in treachery to trap us. This was a 
strange kind, elliptical like a torpedo. As it 
lay on the surface of the water, its stem pro- 
truding at low tide, it was not unlike a floating 



122 The Events Man. 

porpoise with dorsal fin erect. The same hour 
we sighted the captured junk coming out. I 
signalled her and sent the laute aboard, vainly 
hoping for sight of the real Chief. The laute 
got the story. 

The junk had scarcely gotten from our sight 
two days before when the Chief piped defec- 
tion. She was set nor' nor'east, but by look- 
ing at his pocket compass he found the yellow 
skipper had changed her course to nor' nor'- 
west — straight for the Russian strongholds. 
Evidently he counted the Chief good bag and 
looked for silver if he turned a white man with 
a Japanese boy over intact to his former mast- 
ers. 

The Chief again showed his hand, one, as 
I have before remarked, steady, wiry, tough. 
He got nigh the tiller, under the sheets, with 
his boy beside him, pulled the Mauser auto- 
matic, drove, with a grand gesture, the yellow 
devils before him into the prow, and then, 
helped by his wrist compass, jammed the tiller 
back to the general direction he knew, the nor' 
nor'east. Until he left them, thirty-six hours 
later, he never once closed his eyes or resigned 
his post, or pocketed his gun, but held them 



Again a Captive. 123 

deadly there to the work. As I heard this my 
teeth clenched over the resolve that nothing 
could turn me back, armed as I henceforth 
would be, with this memory. 

It was low tide. Barely had he turned in 
toward the lemon ribbon that spelled the Yalu 
than there appeared racing down from the 
northwest, a sloop. The Chief, passing his 
gun to his boy for the moment, surveyed the 
stranger with his glass and discovered her 
alive with Cossack faces, astrakan rimmed, and 
rough with Manchu heaviness. The launch 
signalled the junk to stop and the yellow skip- 
per ran aft, in apparent fear and dismay. The 
Chief fired a shot into the masthead and then 
pointed the Mauser straight at the yellow 
heart. The skipper ran back to his sullen 
crew, the junk kept on, lumbering and slow, 
for the river, and the swift sailing sloop closed 
in at twice the speed from behind. 

Now, the water a junk draws is less than 
would satisfy the thirst of a blue blood Ken- 
tuckian. On summer mornings they are al- 
leged to skim through Mongolia across the dew 
of the millet fields. The tide was then at ebb, 
and the bar at the Yalu's mouth forbade all 



124 The Events Man. 

entrance save that of vessels whose drawing 
power might be limited to that of a pat hand. 
The question was: who would get there first? 

Over the mud flats they sped, the Chief and 
his impressed crew in the ancient junk before, 
the Cossacks in their steam launch, weaponed 
with Martinis, behind. At 2,000 yards they 
commenced firing and the bullets lapped the 
water as do the first drops of a heat shower. 
The Chinamen huddled and jabbered, fast com- 
ing to that strength found in union. Reflect- 
ing evidently on chances, they found the lesser 
to be against a single white man with a gun 
than against twenty white men with as many 
guns. They grew calm and the spirit of 
mutiny was about to collect itself for a mighty 
spring that would surely have annihilated the 
Chief when the Cossacks fired their last volley, 
hauled down their sails and came to a sudden 
stop — grounded ! 

The junk ran over the bar on fourteen 
inches, and the next night at sundown was 
arrested by pickets who stepped mysteriously 
out of the green woods along the south bank 
of the Ai fork. The Chief produced some 
magic paper that took him into camp and set 



Again a Captive. 125 

the junk free. So I knew him safe with 
Kuroki's vanguard and about to see first proof 
that the Japs had risen to artillery superior to 
bows and arrows. 

To me, then, Port Arthur beckoned. There 
was nothing else for the Nezvs to know. The 
first army was covered ; we had placed the sec- 
ond; the third was not yet mobilized. That 
rocky crag, the apex of the world's events, the 
tomb of monster heroism appalling and unbe- 
lievable, lured the Fawan as its siren sound 
whispered to all that neared its reach that year. 

We anchored that night in the Elliot group, 
which Togo, three weeks later seized and held 
through all the seige as his base. Perkis and 
I agreed the next morning to skirt the Tiger's 
Tail, running past the mouth of the harbour 
for "a look see" if Togo was about, and where. 
As we rounded the Lion's Mane, we could see 
the muzzles of Riranski corked from the dews 
and canvassed in Khaki dress, so close did we 
come that our twenty-six diameter binoculars 
detected all but the calibre. The patched 
furze on the hills played up in dazzling fresh- 
ness under the new sun and far in the haze to 
leeward we picked up the lighthouse on the 



126 The Events Man. 

tip of Liaotishan. Then marshalling down be- 
tween, tier on tier, rose battery and fort, lifted 
in holy might above the inconsequent waves 
that floated our peashell in its passing roguery. 
The four square ribs of the wireless station 
on Golden Hill pricked the blue and across the 
narrow V that spelled the harbour's mouth 
could be seen the castellated ramparts of in- 
terior Etseshan which lifted above the august 
scent a vast series of fronded scarps like the 
storied might of a medieval castle. 

No Togo. No fighting ships, no hint of war 
came to us from that sublime and terrible 
fortress. It lay beyond us in sear might — a 
legend. Who dare say that was Port Arthur ? 
I rubbed my eyes. I could be only the favored 
keeper of Alladin's lamp, who rubbed as he 
dreamed of Syracuse and Acre ! Only a scene 
from ancient history could have silhouetted 
such picture joy against the sun ! 

But through the V of the harbour's mouth 
masts showed and before I became a mere 
strolling scribe there rose from that inlet 
among the narrow protecting hills a straight 
smudge of black, coming from the V as steam 
rises from the mouth of a patient tea-kettle. 



Again a Captive. 127 

"I believe there's a boat coming out," I cried. 

"No/' said Perkis, looking lazily shoreward, 
"only firing up at the dock, that's all. But I 
think we'd better lay off a bit. We're too close 
under the forts. They mi^ht stin^ us." The 
Fawan nosed therefore seaward. 

In three minutes there could be no mistake. 
It was black smoke and it was coming out, full 
speed, from two boats whose funnels now 
turned head on to us and might have been a 
dozen, for all we saw, because one only lay in 
vision line ahead. They were coming straight 
for us, seven or eight miles away. Over their 
bows curled white crests of foam, pushed 
ahead of them as frothy wedges are driven be- 
fore three-engine snow plows in snowy Dakota. 
The speed must have been twenty-five knots 
and our limit was ten. 

"We're in for it now," remarked Perkis, 
with his imperturbable calm, as he jammed the 
wheel Chefooside. Then Cromarty stepped 
up, touched his hat, and said: 

"If you don't mind my saying so, sir, I would 
suggest that it will look suspicious for us to 
change our course for Chefoo when our papers 
read we cleared for Ching Wang Tao," 



128 The Events Man. 

"It's too late now," replied Perkis, ignoring 
me. Cromarty uttered a groan of despair and 
disappeared below, but not before he had but- 
toned me again. 

"Don't you think we'd ought to stop, sir?" 
he asked. "I could have told you it was mad- 
ness coming within hailing distance of a port 
like this." 

"They're not after us," I said. "At the 
worst, they'll only look at our papers." 

"But your papers are all Japanese," said he, 
saw he had put his shot home, touched his cap 
deferentially and withdrew. 

I went aft the bridge and watched the race. 
We were abeam their course, drawing like a 
freight engine leaving the yard. They, racing 
along like an express train at full speed. 

"A stiff pace, eh?" It was Perkis at my 
elbow. Speech from him meant more than 
words. 

"Suppose they're after us?" 

"No. But even if " 

As he spoke there was a little spurt from the 
bow of the nearest. I saw the flame spring 
from the centre and paused to hear the sound. 

"A blank !" called Perkis. As the words left 



Again a Captive. 129 

his mouth the shot went kerplunk fifty yards 
beyond us, directly across our bows. That 
ended the discussion. Perkis rang "stop" on 
the telegraph and put the Fawan's head hard 
about. 

The Colonel came up beaming. 'T wonder 
if they'll take us in. What a story it will 
make! I'll go and see Alexieff and say, 'Ad- 
miral, do you remember the last time we met? 
No? It was at the State House, at my 
father's table. You were only a captain then.' " 

"Suppose the rest of us get locked up, or 
shot as spies," I queried. 

"Oh, but they'll not dare touch me — with my 
papers," called back the Colonel and his jubila- 
tion from then on was the only relief the situa- 
tion bore. 

The first was coming head on and would ram 
us amidships if she didn't change that fright- 
ful speed and course. She was a destroyer. 
Both were destroyers stripped clean for action 
and painted a dull olive green. The first had 
slanted slightly to angle our course and I could 
see her four funnels, chubby as hogsheads, 
vomiting bituminous smoke in gobs of black 
spittle. I could see three officers on the 



130 The Events Man. 

bridge — bearded demons — in sea coats and 
rubber boots, deluged each moment with spray 
as the destroyers plowed the swell and standing 
legs apart tilting the bridge as an acrobat a 
sea-saw plank. I could see the twelve pounder 
for'ard and behind and the black plates with 
the shiny rims where the barrels poked 
through; the machine guns on the port and 
starboard quarter decks, the three pounders 
scattered about, the torpedo tubes lying fore 
and aft with the nonchalance of champion 
heavy weights about to enter the ring. A bell 
rang in the engine room, and I could see the 
faces of the crew rubbering through the chinks 
by the long rakish barrels of the devilish naval 
guns, while a tight chubby Johnnie ran out and 
pulled the blocks from the muzzles. 

As they came on, reckless bent, I surveyed 
with a thrill of contact these "lancers of the 
sea" — their perfect lines shielding a box of 
machinery of constitution so delicate that a 
single shot through any plate would send 
every prisoner within to instant scalding death ; 
all engines, built for speed, rammed with device 
and mechanism to the turning of a hair, and 
ready, at the word, for any wild deed of craft 



Again a Captive. 131 

or daring. The mere maneuver came as 
fascination to one engine-fond, and I forgot 
the danger. This till she seemed so near that 
only a miracle could stop her. Then I gasped 
in fright. 

As I gasped she turned, almost square in her 
tracks. The other followed and the two slid 
about us with the poise of circling eagles. 
Comanches swooped down and circled a 
lumbering stage in the emigrant days, coursing 
the prairies with wild and haughty steeds and 
ranging into their prey with fierce and elegant 
grandeur; just so these two Russian destroy- 
ers turned the bows and slipped under the stern 
of the Fawan. 

One bearded rascal on the bridge conde- 
scended to look upon us. He saw that he had 
secured our attention. Then he reached a 
long fore-arm over the spray-wet deck in front 
and circled it about with a jerk that read sup- 
pressed rage. Then, with his fellow, he put 
head about, easily as a locomotive is rear-front- 
ed on a turn-table, and steamed slowly toward 
Port Arthur. We followed. 

"The Petropavlovsk went down last week by 
a mine, if you don't mind my saying it, sir," 



132 The Events Man. 

remarked Cromarty at my elbow, "and perhaps 
they think we're up to the same trick — laying 



mines." 



I had been looking seaward, but suddenly I 
noticed that my vision comprehended land. So 
I looked forward and found the course veering. 
We were putting parallel-wise down the coast. 
But no sooner had I seen that than we put hard 
astern and followed almost back in our tracks. 
So the course continued, tacking in and out for 
the V of the harbour's mouth. 

"They're steering us through the mines," 
shouted Cromarty. "After giving away the 
plan like that, if you don't mind my saying it, 
sir, we'll never get out of here." 



A WILDERNESS OF MINES 



CHAPTER VIII. 

Sailing among four thousand mines, we are put 
harshly under marine guard, hustled to confinement, 
released as suddenly and face the acres of destruction 
to ironic laughter. 

The sea was sown with mines. 

Roughly estimated, thousands at that mo- 
ment guarded the entrance to Port Arthur. 
Three hands had done the sowing — the Rus- 
sian, the Japanese and the sportive fist of 
Chance. The Russians blew up on their own 
mines, the Japanese foundered on theirs and 
the blind god staggered those of ill luck who 
flew a neutral flag. In deadly intent, and 
deadly power there was little difference among 
the three. Sometimes — rarely — execution fol- 
lowed intent, but in the wild, red shambles of 
war who that takes the sardonic gibe of effect 
puzzles over curious cause? 

The Russians had begun by laying mines 
in series parallel with the shore and across the 
channel entrance. These were fired by elec- 
tricity from the forts. Then among and be- 
yond these were strewn electro-contact me- 
chanical mines insecurely anchored. Every 



136 The Events Man. 

time there was a northeast blow these shifted 
and wandered aimlessly with the irresponsible 
joy of children out of school. Early in the 
month the Ying Sing, laying an outer series, 
had stumbled over her own stupidity and went 
to the bottom with every soul on board, which 
is of no consequence, and would not be men- 
tioned here had she not also taken to the bot- 
tom with her the plans for 400 mines which 
she had just placed. So the Russians were not 
sure. The Japanese, to add joy to this game 
of nations, lay outside bright days, watched 
Wiren's fleet come out for manoeuvres, traced 
the course, and at night sent daring torpedoers 
in to drop mechanical mines in the channel. 
These, of course, drifted, ledged, wedged and 
played about the bright blue bay, populous as 
a school of porpoises. 

Mere thought of one of these contact rang- 
ers, its five revolving prongs pricking as many 
avenues to the rapid evaporation of two hun- 
drd pounds of gun cotton, brought many a 
peaceful skipper hundreds of miles away at 
Hong Kong to the verge of blind staggers. 
Imagine, then, our joy in a field of 4,000 run 
amock! You may be sure Perkis hugged the 



A Wilderness of Mines. 137 

wake of that murderous destroyer so close the 
Fawan's nose almost clipped the screw as we 
obeyed the crook of the bent forearm. 

"Any chance of our getting shot?" I asked 
him. 

"Mebbe, mebbe not," said he, and tended 
straight to his knitting. How well the skipper 
rose to the situation that day — like steel, tem- 
pered steel, whose storied joy the samurai be- 
lieve leaps like a charger to action! 

This is how I felt about it. The Russian 
Government had but the week before notified 
the Powers that dispatch boats would not be 
permitted within the territorial limits of Port 
Arthur. True, they had taken us outside the 
limits, but who could prove it, should they want 
to hold us prisoners? That was the least. 
They had also said that operators of newspaper 
boats using the wireless would be shot as spies. 
True, we had no wireless, but who could tell 
how flimsy a pretext the Russians would need 
for desperate work? I had sampled their 
bungling at Newchwang, while in the past 
month they had fired on the inoffensive Tal- 
king and the Pronto. 

There were no Japanese boys this time. So 



138 The Events Man. 

much to the good. I determined to have no 
Japanese papers. So I burnt up my army pass 
and my Red Cross decoration. Then I got 
old Meyer's government papers making him 
a pilot in the Island Sea. Then I went after 
the Colonel. 

"I'm not going to risk confiscation," said I, 
"so I think it best to burn up all the Japanese 
papers you hold.'' 

He mumbled, muttered — "Outrage — Use- 
less — Unwarranted " but I insisted, and he 

produced two. I put them in the stove. 
"Sorry," said I, "but I must have the rest." 
"Oh, I say, now," this is too much of a good 
thing. I want to keep these papers. Here's 
one with Marshall Oyama's signature. I 
want that for my permanent collection." 
"Sorry, but I must insist. This is my boat." 
He mumbled again, muttered, hesitated, stut- 
tered "absurd, impossible," and at length pro- 
duced a bunch from his bosom and they fed the 
flames of my cabin stove. Then I went to the 
wheel house, got the Japanese flag from under 
the charts, tucked it under my vest, sought 
Cromarty, he led me to the stoke-hole, threw 



A Wilderness of Mines. 139 

open the furnace door and I flung the flag on 
the blazing grates. 

Then I was properly disgusted. Coming 
back on deck I could see we were rounding to 
under the Tiger's Tail and I felt that all was 
lost. They would confiscate the boat, and, if 
we escaped with our lives, we would still be 
held till the end of the seige, which would be, 
God knew when. But as we drew near, curi- 
osity supplanted fear and I looked eagerly for 
each distinguishing mark on this focus of the 
world's eye. There wasn't much — a hollow 
curve of rock rising into beetling cliffs, not 
unlike the entrance to the Golden Gate, slit 
here and there with dark spots from which 
gun muzzles peered out. I was in no frame 
of mind to enjoy the beauty of it. I felt like 
Rosalind astray. "So this is the forest of 
Arden !" said she, "when I was home I was in 
a better place." I appreciated the delicacy of 
Shakespeare's conception. Why had I not 
stayed in Minneapolis content with the night 
whistle of the police reporter? 

Through a megaphone came an order, 
"anchor !" We "let go" in seven fathoms, less 
than I expected, and lay down menaced by the 



I40 The Events Man. 

guns of a dozen batteries. Suppose they 
should try pot hunting, just for luck? Well, 
they didn't, or someone else would be telling 
this story and his talk would be wild and hor- 
rible. 

Half an hour passed before the V released a 
tug boat jammed tight with marines. There 
was a heavy swell on and the destroyer that 
lay guarding us was in the trough describing 
an arc through the heavens with her funnels 
every time she rolled. As the tug boat pulled 
alongside and tried to send on a boarding party 
they found, now twenty feet separating our 
rails and theirs, and now a few inches. Each 
time they evened up five or six marines would 
jump aboard, sprawling over fixed bayonets 
as an awkward juggler over a split chair. But 
they righted all right, and soon we had twenty 
business-looking chaps ranged fore and aft. 
These marines always have fixed bayonets. I 
believe they go to bed with fixed bayonets. 

The officer in command touched his hat. 
"I'll have to ask you to go below, sir," he said. 
Then things suddenly began to move. Herbert 
had been debating in his cabin whether or no 
he should appear with insignia, but had paused 



A Wilderness of Mines. 141 

too long on decision, and he now tumbled be- 
low with me, mumbling something about out- 
rage, indignity, and other strong words. 
Perkis was looking down on the scene from 
the bridge, quite calm, and contented, with arms 
akimbo. The officer glanced up and caught 
him. "Sorry, Fll have to ask you to go be- 
low, sir," he said. 

"Aw right — a-aw right," drawled Perkis, 
and shambled down. 

The marines were hustling Cromarty, who 
had tried to move off with his usual dignity, 
but they pricked him and he hopped down to 
the engine room with the celerity of a stoker. 
They put him over the starting gear and told 
him to personally obey bridge signals. "Im 
treated like a dog," he cried to himself. "I 
can't stand the humiliation." It was rough on 
a chief engineer who had been a master eigh- 
teen years. 

Old Meyer simply sat in his cabin, chewing 
his gums, rolling his knotty head, rubbing his 
shapeless hands and mumbling a lot of stuff 
from which could occasionally be extri- 
cated "soospichus — Rooshians — swine — Roos- 
hians — soospichus." I had given Meyer one 



142 The Events Man. 

of my revolvers and he was fingering it in his 
coat pocket. I wore the other, for I didn't 
know what might happen. If it came to the 
worst, I had made up my mind for a try my- 
self. I suppose a wiser man would have en- 
tirely succumbed to 4,000 mines, the combined 
batteries of the strongest fortress in the East 
and the bayoneted marines of an angry gar- 
rison. Well, excuses have I none, and I was 
a bit hot then on the proposition of neutral 
rights. Moreover, I was not the sort to ac- 
cept without a struggle the reality that then 
faced us — a gloomy prison for nine months to 
be called "home.'' 

Perkis stopped in the deck saloon, where the 
officer with four marines was waiting for him 
to pass below. He stepped over to the pantry, 
saying as he went: "Will you have a drink?" 

The officer ignored the question. "We're 
waiting for you to step below, Captain," he 
said. 

"Aw right, a-aw right," said Perkis. "If 
you say I've got to go below I suppose I've got 
to go. You apparently have the goods to back 
it up. But won't you have a drink first?" 

"We're waiting. Captain," said the officer. 



A Wilderness of Mines. 143 

*'Aw right, a-aw right/' said Perkis, "But 
if you won't drink with me Til have to drink 
alone." He took the bottle of whisky and tan- 
san from the shelf, poured out a smacking 
tumbler full, raised the glass high above his 
head, called, ''Here's to your health !" and lap- 
ped the booze. Then he nonchalantly took the 
stairs. 

They had weighed anchor now and I tried 
to look out of the port hole, but they had closed 
the glass and a bayoneted marine stood in the 
cabin door to prevent our peeking. Two 
others of those benign natures stood in the pas- 
sage, so I looked helplessly over at the Colonel 
— and laughed. He sat on the sofa, his right 
hand on a revolver sticking from his belt and 
his left grasping the barrel of a Winchester 
that stood behind the door. "The indignity!" 
he shouted at me, his eyes glaring as if I had 
done it, "That they should hustle me down 
here — an officer of the United States govern- 
ment!" 

They were all over the boat, two petty offi- 
cers on the bridge, a man at the wheel, marines 
in every room, even way down in the stoke- 
hole. Well, we were in for it. That was a 



144 The Events Man. 

cinch. We had pulled far inside the three-mile 
limit by this time and they would never have 
taken us in like that had they ever intended 
us to get out alive. And they had not even 
glanced at the ship's papers, let alone search 
for further incriminating proof. It was plain 
confiscation ! 

At length the engine stopped and a voice 
floated to us from above: "You can come on 
deck now." 

I thought we were probably inside the har- 
bour, but no! As I lurched against the deck- 
house — we were still lapped by the swell — I 
looked up into the muzzles of the topmost bat- 
tery on the Tiger's Tail, so near that nothing 
over a machine gun with a forty-five degree 
depression could have raked us. A Japanese 
fireship lay piled on the beach, aftside below 
tide, stark reminder that we floated above 
Hirose's remains and were on the scene of 
deeds daring as ever illumined sea history. 
Here the certain death parties had slipped 
through storm and dark to plug that channel 
with six-thousand-ton merchanters and beyond 
the hari-kari survivors had frothed away in 
fanatic zeal against those cruel mocking rocks, 



A Wilderness of Mines. 145 

climbing hand over hand in blind rage to the 
ironic bayonets of the jaunty guards above. 
Here the torpedoers had darted in, like angry 
wasps, seeking worse than they brought — the 
scintillant scalding death that comes to men in 
a box all boilers when one of those machine 
guns pierces the plate with a ball. A stone's 
throw from here the Petropalovsk a week be- 
fore went down, and over this spot was yet to 
pass the death throes of the Pacific fleet of the 
third navy of the world. 

What did I see ? A maze of masts through 
the V, smoke, funnels, rows of brick buildings 
crowning a hill — and — the leaping Russian 
pilot. Then I came back to the Fawan. The 
marines were gone. The tug boat had cast 
away. Even as I looked the boat-hook that 
held them was released, while, the pilot spring- 
ing safely to her deck, the Fawan to tilt of sea 
and crash of tide drifted a hundred feet aftside. 
A voice from the deck-house of the pilot boat 
floated in, mistily; 

"You can go now !" 

I gasped, rushed to the taffrail, saw that hole 
in the sea wherein the Petropavlovsk had dis- 



146 The Events Man. 

appeared, and wailed with every energy in my 
lungs : 

"But the mines! How will we escape the 
mines ?'' 

"Its all right," came the voice. "All right. 
All right. You can go now." Was it mockery 
I heard in laughter. I looked up those dark 
cliffs, dyed now in gold, for night wa? closing 
in, and saw silhouetted against the sk> the as- 
sembled gun crew from those batteries on the 
tip of the Tail. Was it their voices I heard, 
for I could see them talking, one to another, 
and pointing our way. 

"Its all right now — all ri^ht. You can go 
now," floated back the avenging voice. 

Go? Where? Before us lay the fortress, 
on every other side for at least three miles 
stretched that wilderness of mines, waiting for 
just such a flippant touch as lay in the nose of 
the Fawan to spirt us into hell. There were 
buoys and stakes scattered about, but only the 
Russians knew the meaning. Perkis had never 
seen the pattern before. The Colonel was ex- 
pressing his regret that we had not been taken 
in, and was divided between indignation at me 
for loss of his papers and profound sorrow that 



A Wilderness of Mines. 147 

he had had no heart to heart talk with Alexieff. 

"Any idea how we came in?'' I asked 
Perkis. 

"No/' he answered. He was a game rascal, 
from start to finish of that show he never turn- 
ed a hair. 

"We might lie here over night, "suggested 
the Colonel. "In the morning they may take 
pity on us and take us into the town, or else 
send a pilot out." 

"Not on your life," said I. "That's not their 
game. It was right here they riddled the 
Pronto and the Kaiping. You caii't ever tell 
what these fool Russians will do. They might 
get firing in the night, put a few shot through 
us, and then, in the morning, cable out that a 
fool British boat had wandered too near the 
forts in the night and had been shot by mistake 
— thought to be a newspaper boat. Besides, 
the Japanese might attack, and we'd be be- 
tween two fires then and be sunk. There's no 
chance here. That's certain." 

"And slim chance away from here," added 
Perkis. 

"No chance," corrected Cromarty. "We'll 
strike a mine sure." 



148 The Events Man. 

Then all looked to me for the decision. 
There was but a few minutes of daylight left. 
Where we lay, under the cliff, black night had 
already fallen. Only far out at sea could I de- 
tect the fast lowering light. Already the dim 
stars showed and, in front, the twinkle of the 
town's lights began to swell. Will I ever for- 
get the scene — not bad for a death setting, as I 
look back on it — hushed, forbidding, o'er- 
weighted with the mighty calm of that super- 
human sentinel, the vast fortress. 

These silhouetted forms of the gun crew, now 
fast disappearing in the murky twilight, had 
found relief from watchers' tedium. They 
were laughing — laughing — at what? Why at 
us, of course. With the joy of devils watching 
a fresh arrival to the stoking pits their glee 
resounded through the silence. The taunt 
lashed me as a goad. What would the John- 
nies under the British flag do? I turned to 
Cromarty. 

"All ready, Chief?" I asked. 

"Ready, sir," he answered. I turned to 
Perkis. 

"All right, skipper," I called. Cromarty 



A Wilderness of Mines. 149 

was already on his way down. Perkis paused 
for orders. 

"A straight course for Chefoo," I said. 
"And full speed ahead." 

Then Tansan brought a bottle of whisky 
and we all took a drink — and another — and 
another. We lit cigars and puffed deeply, 
watched the Tail wreath into shadow and felt 
that mocking taunt die in echo. The stars 
leaned out of heaven and watched us ride on. 
Fate slipped down and perched upon our 
shoulders. The Chinks aft the deckhouse were 
kowtowing before a tiny joss. Perkis told how 
the Ting Shan went down on a mine, in less 
than a minute, and not a soul saved. We talk- 
ed about the Petropavlovsk. Again silence. 
Mathematics came to the mind of each. 
The problem we faced was this : If a boat like 
the Petropavlovsk, of 15,000 tons, 500 feet long 
and carrying 800 men goes down in two min- 
utes and saves forty-six how long will it take 
the Fawan of 300 tons to go and how many of 
her thirty-two will be saved ? 

"I saw a mine blow up oiT Taku in the Boxer 
year," said Cromarty, who, his engines re- 
sponding gallantly, had again joined us. 'The 



150 The Events Man. 

spurt went a hundred and forty feet into the 
air. If we strike one and some should be lucky 
enough to get a spar we would still all go down 
— caught in the wash." 

The sun was gone. Blackness behind, black- 
ness before, blackness on all sides — and we 
sped on — reeling on the brink of death. 

"When we see the search light on the tip of 
Liaotishan we're safe," said Perkis, puffing 
his cigar. "Here, give me a new one," he add- 
ed, finding the butt flecked and not burning 
straight as he tossed the half consumed weed 
into the sea. It fell with a dull singe and we 
all started. For the first time the Colonel had 
apparently forgotten the appearance of the 
stage properties of his experience. 

What would happen when we struck the 
mine? Would there be the least warning, or 
would it be as sudden as death from a cannon 
shot? These thoughts occupied my mind. I 
glanced at the dingy and the cutter, first upon 
one and then the other. I did not think it even 
worth time to see if they were cut clear of en- 
tanglement. There would be no chance for 
them. It was all over, but I was glad it was 
over quickly. I believed I preferred such an 



A Wilderness of Mines. 151 

end to nine months in Port Arthur's dungeons. 
But who would get the news. Then it occur- 
red to me that here was news itself. Who 
would get it and when would it be gotten 
out? I wondered if I couldn't turn back now 
and arrange with those fellows to send the cable 
— the proper one. It would be a scoop worth 
a scare head. What an ass I was not to arrange 
that! 

"There's the light," said Perkis, in his im- 
passive way. "We're all right, boys." 

"No. We're not all right." It was old 
Meyer, mumbling through his gums. He had 
stuck close to the bridge party all the time. 
"I know these demned Rooshians. They were 
down that stoke-hole a hell of a while, an' 
they've put bums in the coal." 



THE QUEST FOR NEWS 



CHAPTER IX. 

We organize the service, bring the Fawan into re- 
pute, capture the first guileless officer and learn of 
the landing of the second army. 

There were no "bums" in the coal. We came 
safely to Chefoo, but without news. Then, nor 
at any time, did we advertise our troubles. 
We had our revenge, for ten days later the tug 
boat that took us in was blown up by a mine 
almost in the identical spot where we had 
anchored under the Tail, and three months 
later the Reshetelini, the destroyer that had 
fired across our bows, committed hari-kari in 
Chefoo harbor, to escape the immanent Japa- 
nese. 

Why were we taken in to Port Arthur? 
Perhaps they expected to find wireless appara- 
tus on us, whereby we should have been con- 
demned. Finding none they suddenly reflected 
we had been seized out of limits. Then that 
mocking laugh! If we went down, for which 
there were nine chances in ten, it would appear 
accidental, and there would be no one to say 
nay. If we escaped no newspaper boat would 
ever come to Port Arthur again. They were 



156 The Events Man. 

right, too, in the last ; none ever did come again 
— except the Fawan! 

But the Fawan and her operators had now 
received their baptism. As a dispatch boat 
the tight Httle tug had found herself. Surviv- 
ing the dangers she had already encountered 
had put her alone in the race, without a rival 
for first crack at the cable. From the begin- 
ning there had been several competitors on our 
trail, but what we had gone through combined 
to put them out of business. Learning this 
kept me at the game through much perplexity 
that followed, and so, for the next three 
months, the Fawan reigned in her sphere of 
usefulness and paid for her keep. But the 
situation was not without its sour aspects. 

"Boy, every time you leave this harbour you 
take your life in your hands," was the saluta- 
tion with which John Fowler, the consul at 
Chefoo, greeted me each time I made port. 

"I wouldn't take your job for $10,000," mut- 
tered many a correspondent of my acquaint- 
ance. 

The merchants at Chefoo, with whom I was 
trading, the bills running as high sometimes, 
with one, as $3,500 a month, grew restless, and 



The Quest for News. 157 

curiously hinted that they would be glad of 
cash, though all well knew I had balance of 
degree at the bank. "Its not that we don't 
trust you/' said one. ''Now we have entire 
confidence in your personally, and we know 
there would never be any difficulty about col- 
lection if you were here — but — well — couldn't 
you at least vise each account thus, 'good for 
the Chicago Daily News' — because — well, so 
they'd be good if anything happens." 

Perkis was my main stay. He never bucked 
once, whatever I asked of him, but he did seem 
to put a spoke in the wheel, when, after all this 
gratuitous advice, I sought his opinion. 
"Well," said he, "You may go out and come 
back — once — or twice — or a dozen times — ^but, 
if you keep on going out, and never take warn- 
ing — well, you're sure to go down." 

"Perkis" said I, "Do you want your time?" 

He looked up startled. "Did I ask for it?" 
Said he, and eyed me with a cool disdain. 

"No," said I, "But the Fawan is going on 
and try to scoop all the naval news of this war. 
If you want to stay with her I'll be delighted 
to have you, but if you feel that way its time 
for me to look for a game skipper right now," 



158 The Events Man. 

"Do as you like/' said he. We were stand- 
ing on the bridge, he with his arms a-kimbo 
over the rail and wearing that nonchalant, su- 
preme air that always became him. "If I leave 
you'll have to fire me." 

I couldn't fire him, nor could I let go the 
Fawan. I went down and looked at her. She 
had just been painted — I always kept her trim 
and clean as any warship — and her ivory white 
with the name of the paper strung abeam from 
stem to stern in great black letters, sat out of 
the water like a Christmas cake. The funnel 
was a bright red, the deck house trimmed in 
brown, the anchors with ivory black. There 
was the crew drawn up in line, as always, to sa- 
lute me as I passed. There was dour Cromarty, 
holding aloof with his deferential manner, 
drawing several fathoms on his black cigar, and 
watching me from the tip of his eye, for the 
word to fire up. He always had steam ready for 
a three minutes' notice. There was old Meyer, 
taffrail lounging, mumbling in his gums, his 
shaggy great head ponderously wagging — and 
the laute, hard-by the anchor, looking to Perkis 
who still puffed above the bridge, without 
haste, without delay. And here comes running 



The Quest for News. 159 

the faithful Tansan, with overcoat and glasses 
and a tumbler, tall and filled with something 
curling steam. No. I couldn't give her up. 
As Huckleberry Finn said of his timber raft, 
'It amounted to something being captain of 
that." 

So we cleared for Chemulpo, still on the 
lookout for a permit which the government at 
Tokyo had promised but had not yet granted. 
It was on this trip we found Fawan Haven. It 
was there we ever afterward spent our long, 
lazy days watching Port Arthur. From it we 
could see the lights of Golden Hill and the 
Tiger's Tail. From it we picked up the refu- 
gees who gave the only accounts that came 
from the beleaguered fortress until the capitu- 
lation. From there we listened to the heavy, 
low boom of Nogi's bombardments and felt 
hurling in past us the responding chastisement 
from Togo's turret pieces. From there we is- 
sued forth to pick up the fleet. From there we 
first saw Togo sweep majestically past in the 
Mikasa. 

It was the last of the Miaotao islands, south 
of Hwang Ching Tao, an oasis in that bleak 
sea. Sheltered from the Liaotung side was a 



i6o The Events Man. 

tiny harbour — a dear haven — from which the 
mountains swept back, forming a perfect 
amphitheatre. These were as a horse-shoe, 
curving to the ends Hke the calks thereon, with 
smashing thin cHffs straight behind. A cave 
led through these cliffs, and we could pass out 
to look upon the battered shores of the penin- 
sula. There we saw the sun set in repeating 
glories of mauve and lilac and saffron and 
orange and pale cherry and amethystine gold. 
There we went in bathing, and there, all day 
Perkis would sit with a piece of salt pork on a 
hook, fishing. To my knowledge he never 
caught anything, but that seemed to deter him 
not. All day, week in and week out, he fished 
and fished, with the patient unconcern of a 
master mind in idleness conceiving gigantic 
plots. 

In Fa wan Haven I came to know something 
of the lore and longing of the sea, intensified, 
perhaps, with the spice of danger that always 
lurked about it. I lay in my cabin of a morn- 
ing listening to that most musical of all sea 
sounds — the drip, drip, drip of the mellifluous 
anchor slipping up through the water accom- 
panying the merry clink of the cables on the 



The Quest for News. i6i 

hawser holes. Or, storm pushed, we lay snug 
and felt the "heave and the halt and the hurl 
and the crash of the comber wind-hounded" as 
it flung itself madly on the rocks outside. There 
was a small Chinese fishing village in the hol- 
low of the horse-shoe. The fishermen had 
never seen a white man before and they looked 
upon us with simple wonder, unmixed with 
fear. Only, like new puppies, all fresh to life, 
they kept away from us until we fed them. One 
day I shot a whale — broke its back with a 
Martini-Henry — and the following day the 
carcass drifted onto the beach. The natives 
got it all and after that they welcomed us each 
time we turned up. 

There, too, I kept on filling Perkis and Cro- 
marty with the news idea. That we should 
anchor at Chefoo at two o'clock in the morn- 
ing, that I should put a few words clicked off 
on my typewriter on the cable, and that these 
same words, expanded and developed with 
heads and what not, should appear on the 
streets of Chicago that same afternoon to be 
read by thousands of unknown men of strange 
unheard-of occupations was to them a never- 
ceasing wonder. Sometimes when important 



1 62 The Events Man. 

stuff was in the air, it would be cabled back to 
London, thence via Suez, to the North China 
Daily News in Shanghai and then perhaps, on 
our next trip back to Chefoo, less than a week 
after we had filed the cable, there would come 
a paper from their own part of the world with 
its front headlines staring out "The Fawan 
says, etc. — " Perkis took the weekly London 
Times, and after we had been out a month, 
there he found nearly every week, in the sum- 
mary of the world's news, accounts of our trips. 
One day Cromarty got a Glasgow Herald from 
his old home, and the Fawan peeping out of 
that put him on pins for the rest of the season, 
and for many seasons more, I dare say, had the 
chance come. So these two men of action 
gradually became imbued with the fiercest spirit 
of enterprise and gave me no inch on keeness. 
Whenever a cable was ready to send, I would 
call them below to the cabin and read it aloud. 
This was a very solemn occasion. Perkis would 
sit with his hands in his lap and look with fierc- 
est concentration at the table. At each period 
he would cock his head on one side, look me 
squarely in the eye, and pronounce critically, 
"Yes— quite right — couldn't be better." Cro- 



The Quest for News. 163 

marty always stood up, arms folded, and 
directed that patient, silent, powerful gaze at a 
point immediately above my head. He made 
no motion, uttered no word until the reading 
was quite finished, looked at me, glancing as he 
shifted his feet, and uttered his judgment: 
"Just pat, sir." It was never different, never 
less, never more. Cromarty with exceeding 
difficulty, composed signatures to the vouchers 
of his monthly pay, yet he rose nobly to this 
situation as he did to every other for which I 
called upon him. Incidentally they lost no 
prestige in the lantern houses along the sea 
front which they frequented on shore leave. 
There, when the worthies were properly gin- 
spurred and surrounded by a silent, gaping 
crowd, I rose out of obscurity as the tallest 
writer chap since Shakespeare, and as for sea 
war knowledge Togo wasn't in it. But the 
service did not lose. 

At Chemulpo that trip we found nothing we 
were looking for. The permit had not come. 
The fleet was a thing of myth, the army one of 
legend. I went to Seoul and received a lugubri- 
ous salutation from the Minister. "Young 
man," said he, "I know all about you, and Fd 



164 The Events Man. 

advise you to give up that boat. You can't get 
any news, and it's only a question of a few days 
when you'll be sunk." 

I thanked him politely and went back to my 
loyal crew. That night, after I rolled in, tele- 
gram-less, news-less, permit-less, hopeless (not 
quite), Cromarty shuffled into my cabin in his 
felt slippers. I was surprised, for we had come 
almost to a tiff that afternoon over his collect- 
ing mania. He had filled the f or'ard hold with 
skates bought up in every port and from every 
sampan, at all prices from a sen to a dollar, 
and there he was keeping them against a re- 
turn to Taku and winter. I was thinking of 
that when he held out to me a pink telegram, 
one of those silly Korean telegrams that look 
like notes from a boudoir. He scratched a 
match with his frost-bitten fingers, and there, 
in my pajamas, I read this sentence from the 
American Minister at Tokyo : 

''Your permit is granted, but absolutely 
worthless. You are forbidden to go north 
of Chemulpo and Chef 00. Purpose Fawan use- 
less. Had better give up." 

Cromarty looked and blinked in his half 
blind fashion. The match sputtered and went 



The Quest for News. 165 

out. He lit another and stood shuffling, wait- 
ing for orders. 

"What are you going to do?" at length he 
asked. Three more matches had gone and still 
he was standing there, patient in his felt slip- 
pers, keen as I was for the news fray. I looked 
up. His face was obedient eagerness. It 
seemed impossible he could not know what was 
in that telegram, yet his face plainly said so. 

"Tell Perkis," said I "That we clear for the 
Yalu at daylight. Have steam ready for three 
o'clock." 

What were my plans, if held up, if captured 
again ? I wasn't at all clear just then. It was 
one of those moments when a man thinks of 
but one thing, to go on. The battle of the 
Yalu had been fought, but that fleet with the 
second army was still loose and for news of it 
two hemispheres were waiting. Military per- 
sons will tell you it is useless for the corres- 
pondent to go against such odds. Humani- 
tarians said the same to the Japs who assaulted 
Port Arthur. 

Arrived off the Yalu we found its yellow as 
cheerless and as sightless as a bald pate in 
August. We had stopped every junk on the 



1 66 The Events Man. 

way up cross-examining everybody, but there 
was no word of that mysterious lost fleet. 

"Suppose," said I to Perkis when we stood 
out there in a wilderness of wavy nothing. 
"That we push right in to Wiju, despite the 
Russians, despite the Japanese?" It was at a 
conference in his cabin. 

"I'm willing," said Perkis. 

"They'll sink us," protested Cromarty. 

"With what?" replied Perkis, sneerfuUy. 

Cromarty paused. He was up against it, but 
for the moment only. As the idea came to him 
has face brightened with alacrity. '"With 
field guns," he said. 

"Pshaw !" said I, "Field guns can't sink us." 
Having never seen a field gun at close range, 
of course I spoke with great authority. 

It was desperate. We went, saw and con- 
quered — nothing. There was as inoffensive a 
town as mud and Korean sloth can raise out of 
Paradise. So we started back — still looking 
for the fleet. That night we encountered a real 
blow. We battened down all things and as we 
went head on into a heavy sea the water swept 
a full foot over all the decks. Perkis, on the 
bridge, was rubber cased as tight as a diver. 



The Quest for News. 167 

As the stem went into the froth the bow rose 
clear and then as she pitched forward the 
for'ard gunwale disappeared and the screw 
clawed air. Spray was sifting through the 
steering ports into the engine room, and some- 
times, when, as we drove in to a wave, but could 
not survive the trough, while the second wave 
caught us butt on, and the gallant Fawan 
trembled in every fibre like a thoroughbred 
first lashed, I feared she would start her 
plates. Clothes were swaying to parabolas on 
their hooks. Lamps were swinging to the 
roofs and when we tried to eat at tiffin time we 
had passed the rack stage and had to hold the 
tureens in our hands. Even then it was an oflf 
chance whether the soup would go into your 
mouth, your ear, or your neighbor's lap. 

''That's the way a destroyer rolls," said 
Perkis, without relaxing his rapt attention 
from the business in hand. 

We banged ahead and by morning the sea 
had eased off. We were then outside Thorn- 
ton Haven, and I said to Perkis (It was the 
way I always did, letting the suggestion come 
from him). 



i68 The Events Man. 

"That was a good tip of yours, skipper. 
We'd better put in here." 

"Well I dunno," said he, "We may find a 
mine, or some of the patrol in there." 

"That's just what I want," said I. 

"A mine !" he exclaimed. 

"The patrol," said I. 

So in we went and sure enough — there they 
lay, a third-class auxiliary cruiser, a converted 
merchanter, some tugboats and barges. They 
were hard to see under the grey sky, painted, 
as they were, a neutral tint, like the landscape. 
So we were within a few hundred yards before 
I anchored and went overboard with the 
bo'sn's crew in the cutter. They lowered a lad- 
der from the cruiser for me and I went on 
deck. A young officer came out smiling and 
saluted. I saluted and followed him to his 
cabin. There were cigarettes and some sake. 
That was the first time I had grounded sake, 
and I thought it was beer. I drank it as such, 
and the effects were — as such. My tongue got 
loose and we had a fine time. It was a bad day 
and he was lonely, and had seen no one to talk 
to for many weeks and — ye gods, the luck — 
had been far from bases and knew nothing of 



The Quest for News. 169 

the disrepute hanging over the heads of 
correspondents. He spoke English as they do 
in the navy — and that's the only place outside 
of the foreign service where they do speak the 
mother tongue distinctly in Japan. 

"What's the news," said I, when the cig- 
arettes and sake were well commenced. 

"O, no news," said he pleasantly. 

'*Ah, yes," said I and we puffed and talked 
about the weather. 

"Well, you've captured Dalny at last," I ven- 
tured. 

"O, no," said he, falling squarely into the 
trap. "But we will take it in a few days." 

"So!" said I, "Well, its certain, I suppose, 
now that the second army's landed." 

"Well, we're not landed yet." 

"But practically disembarked, I'm told." 

"In a few days — ^yes. We began yesterday, 
and they'll take off eight thousand a day now 
until everything is finished." 

"It must have been interesting when they 
commenced." 

"Yes. My ship was part of the escort while 
they held at sea — now for — let me see — ^two 
week — three weeks — four weeks." 



170 The Events Man. 

"Lets see. Where was it they landed? IVe 
heard of the place but have forgotten the name 
just now. It's slipped my memory for the 
moment." 

"Pitzewo." 

"O, yes — yes. Pitzewo. Lets see, how do 
you spell that? 

"P-i-t-z-e-w-o." 

"And lets see. That's just north of Dalny, 
isn't it?" 

"Yes. Its here." He drew a pencil from 
his pocket and roughly sketched a map. 

Well — there it lay, the basis of one of the 
best cables I ever sent. I was about to go, and 
started in my chair, but what he next said 
riveted me to the cane bottom, and for another 
hour I listened. With singular clarity he re- 
lated the story of the greatest of all torpedo at- 
tacks on Port Arthur, over that very channel 
where I, a week before, had all but gone down, 
and in which he had taken part. 

Another world scoop ! 



A MISS IN THE DARK. 



CHAPTER X. 

Surrounded by the fleet, the admiral condescends 
to look upon us, warns us from the coast for fear of 
mines, we call his bluff, and find it — a full hand. 

"Permit mailed to-day. — Griscom." 
This telegram from the Minister at Tokyo 
was handed to me as I entered Chefoo harbour 
flying signals for coal and water. A permit. 
Of what use was it? Here we were coming in 
from our fourth smashing cruise without one. 
Everybody in town was on the anxious seat 
about the Fawan, for this trip had exceeded 
any of the others for length. We had been 
gone ten days and it took but four to run on 
the Chemulpo reefs, six to raise an interna- 
tional pow-wow at Newchwang and three to 
kick up thunder at Port Arthur. Plainly I was 
better off without a permit than with one, but 
the telegram I bore yielded good fruit. With- 
it I sought the Japanese consul, grateful for the 
lift given the Korean minister. 

"Here," said I, "is word from the American 
minister that your government has granted 
official permission to the Fawan, Now, I can't 
wait for the mails and as I destroyed my Japa- 



174 The Events Man. 

nese army pass when captured at Port Arthur. 
I am without a scrap of paper to show my 
identity should your fleet overhaul me. It was 
your well being that caused me to destroy the 
pass, for had the Russians taken it they might 
have used it to get one of their spies through 
your lines. Can't you give me a chit that will 
make this right should any of your people over- 
haul me."' 

The cogency of this hit him amidships. He 
produced three yards of Japanese script, 
parchment sealed and stamped. I don't know 
what it said — I must have it translated some 
time — ^but it certainly made a hit whenever I 
produced it. Possessing that, I received mark- 
ed consideration from every Japanese who ever 
dared question the Fawan, 

One more pippin pulled from that call put my 
arms full for the next hold up. A copy of "offi- 
cial regulations to dispatch boats," arrived 
from the war office in Tokyo. Among the 
labyrinthine restrictions I pulled this: "Cor- 
respondents are subject to the orders of the 
admiral commanding the fleet and will submit 
dispatches to him for censoring." To the ad- 
miral commanding the fleet! The fellow who 



A Miss in the Dark. 175 

drew that up must have been a war office 
clerk who never say a dispatch boat and who 
supposed the admiral spent his nights and days 
on the picket line. 

I had no sooner spotted this in the regula- 
tions than I hustled the mate down to fly the 
blue peter and blow for papers, while I dashed 
off a cable and followed in the cutter. 
"Straight for Pitzewo," said I to the skipper. 
"We'll see the landing of the second army and 
interview Togo on the blockade." 

We weighed at daylight and passed Port 
Arthur well out. The offing was clear of ves- 
sels as the sea of Saragossa and the fortress 
lay inscrutable and silent in the dim distance. 
I had now been on four cruises all about these 
waters supposed to be the center of activity of 
two great hostile fleets and had not yet seen a 
first-class vessel belonging to either. So I had 
smiled when I read interviews in the China 
papers with portly merchants who had jour- 
neyed from Hong Kong to Singapore in deadly 
fear, and when I read how an old gentleman 
had crossed from San Francisco to Yokohama 
in the "Korea" in momentary fear that he 
would go down over a mine, declaring at the 



176 The Events Man. 

end that he would never travel by sea again, 
the risks of war being too great, I told Perkis. 
'The old boy needs a wet nurse," said the 
skipper. "Why, even here his liver wouldn't 
be jerked." Even as he spoke he paused, pick- 
ed up his glasses, looked shorewards, handed 
them to me and said : 

"Well— there they are— at last!" 
We were off Shopingtow, halfway between 
Port Arthur and Dalny. It was a bright 
morning, clear as plate glass in May, and I 
could see them broadside to, in echelon, some 
ten knots off. There were three in front and 
two in the spaces behind, battleships and cruis- 
ers, all of the first class, but I could not tell 
which was which at that distance, nor was I so 
keen a detective then as after floating among 
fleets a six-month. All had two funnels. I 
could see that. Yes — and the fourth in line 
had three. Masts pricked up above all the 
superstructures and laid delicate tracery of 
firm lines upon the hills behind, but so slate- 
grey were the colors of the fleet that even in 
that clarified atmosphere the details of boat 
dimension faded against the far landscape. 
So delighted was I with the find of these 



A Miss in the Dark. 177 

lords of the sea, the Fawan being to my knowl- 
edge the first foreign vessel to spy fighting 
ships of the first class since the war began, 
that it never occurred to me they might be else 
than Japanese. So the skipper at my elbow 
startled me when he said : 

"They're likely Russians out for a reconnoi- 
tre this bring moring. It's so close to Port 
Arthur they can't be caught before they can 
slip back." 

It might be, true enough. There was too 
much rough scuff and hopscotch in my crop's 
memory of Russian courtesy to welcome an- 
other adventure, even priced at stiff experi- 
ence, so I told Perkis to put to sea. It was too 
late. The masts of the nearest began narrow- 
ing as I looked upon her through the glasses. 
Slowly, slowly they closed, then merged all to 
one, a thin white slice of spray, curling like the 
inner rind of a lemon over a beefsteak, spread 
up the slate grey as her bows clove the water, 
the other masts slowly narrowed and became 
one, the whole echelon dissolved and the fleet 
surged line ahead, square athwart our course. 

"Too late!" cried I to Perkis. "Head her 
in, so they'll see we're not trying to escape and 



178 The Events Man. 

plug us one for luck." The Fawan was put 
head about, her engines stopped, and we lay 
to, waiting. Meanwhile they came surging 
on, a vessel Perkis spotted as the Yakuma, 
leading the line and I suddenly felt grow upon 
me that mighty fear that must paralyze the 
land lubber when he first beholds a battle 
fleet out for business, especially when he re- 
ceives unsolicited attention. Presently the 
four rear ones stopped, hove to, and waited, 
while the Yakuma came on at a twenty-knot 
gait, whipping the whitecaps into foam that 
whistled a wild ascending lash into the jaunty 
air. Wrapped in her business suit of dull 
grey, decks cleared for action, hatches bat- 
tened down, the two yawning muzzles of the 
forward turret pieces hurling ahead her grim 
command, she made me feel as though I had 
stood in a pasture about the size of Texas, 
without a fence in sight, waving a red rag in 
the face of an unrefined and boisterous bull. I 
wonder would I have stood lost in wonder at 
the mighty lash of his tail, the steamy spurt 
from his nostrils, the clod-clatter from his 
dashing hoofs? Doubtless, for there would 
have been no parley and the best a man gets 



A Miss in the Dark. 179 

out of life is to sense the occasion. Prayer? 
Well — some folks believe in it. 

"She's a Jap all right/' said Perkis. "Look 
at the smoke." It was pouring, thick as a 
molasses catastrophe, from both funnels. Yes, 
the Russians used hard coal. That we all 
knew. Only the Japanese squandered sooty 
black. 

She didn't come as near as the destroyer, 
but she worked the same racket, went astern 
with her engines, stopped her headway and 
then began preparing to board us. There was 
bustle on the upper deck. They were cutting 
off the cutter. Flap went the automatic belts 
down the dull grey. The donkeys lifted her 
out from the davits, a plank was flung across 
the chasm, twelve oars stepped in, an officer 
followed with a tiny flag which he stuck above 
the tiller, two other officers followed; chug, 
chug, chug went the lowering donkeys, the 
port oars holding her offside with a boathook, 
she slipped into the water like a knife into new 
flesh, and presently I saluted one of the officers 
as he climbed over the side of the Fawan. 

"Where are you going?" said he. 

"Up the coast/' said L 



i8o The Events Man, 



'Ah;' said he, "but- 



I produced that lengthy chit from the Japan- 
ese Consul. He was duly impressed. 
"Where's the admiral?'' I asked. 

"He's not on my ship." 

"I must see the admiral." 

"You can't see the admiral. He's on one 
of those ships off there by the coast." 

"What are the names of those ships?" 

"I cannot tell you the names. It is not al- 
lowed." 

"Your ship is the Yakumaf 

"Yes. It is the Yakuma" 

"I am very sorry to inconvenience you, my 
dear sir, but I must see the admiral," I said. 
"I am just like you — acting under orders. I 
have my orders from Tokyo and I must obey 
them. Here " and I produced the regula- 
tions with that silly sentence referring dis- 
patches in person to the admiral. He was 
floored. So long as you get these chaps in 
the circle of their orders they are adamant. 
Spring a new situation, something unforeseen 
in superior instructions, and they gasp for air. 
He was plainly distressed. Moreover, the 
Consul's chit had scored. I wonder what it 



A Miss in the Dark. i8i 

could have said. It must have been cracking 
high guff. 

"Then suppose you signal for the admiral," 
said he. 

"I have no new signal flags," said I. "Ours 
is the old book, Tve sent for the new book to 
Shanghai, but it hasn't come yet." 

"I don't know how you will see the admiral, 
then." 

"What's the matter with your signalling the 
admiral?" I blandly asked. What a crust! 
The very audacity of it apparently took his 
breath away, but he was up against it, a petty 
officer confronted with a decision. 

'1— I— don't know," he gasped. "I'll have 
to ask my captain." Wherewith he tumbled 
into the cutter and was rowed back. Presently 
through a megaphone I heard, "Approach 
nearer!" The cruiser was then lying front 
across our bows, so the Fawan fell to star- 
board and hung in under her taffrail. There 
were great dents in her sides where shells had 
struck recently, apparently, for the paint had 
not yet been put over the fresh, shiny steel 
that showed through. The torpedo nets were 
hitched up about her booms, as a woman in 



1 82 The Events Man. 

hoops would hold up her skirts in crossing a 
muddy street. All over her the sailors were 
hanging out, leering at tiny us, but the slim, 
gaunt picture of the titanic cruiser presented 
us as handsome a ship as floats. We never 
were able to distinguish the other vessels of 
the fleet, they being of a common type, but the 
Yakuma is known for elegance and distinc- 
tion wherever fighting craft are worshiped. 
But toward us pointed the megaphone. 

'We will signal for the admiral and he will 
come up,'' it cried. And instantly there broke 
from her yard a dozen fluttering ensigns. The 
fleet had been slowly steaming down the coast 
toward Port Arthur, but no sooner had that 
tiny hail burst forth, delicate as the coquettish 
wave of a lady's handkerchief, than the im- 
mense bulk of those fifteen-thousand-ton mon- 
sters turned in their majestic tracks and headed 
on for us. The spray, the black smoke, the 
grim power spoke to us as from the Yakuma, 
and slowly, inevitably, had we not been 
friends, doom would have settled upon us in 
those four floating forts. Yet no billiard ex- 
pert ever babied his balls with more precision. 
Like a cavalry troop they deployed column left. 



A Miss in the Dark. 183 

circled silently about us, and settled down. 
And here those five enormous battle ships, 
bristling with the mightiest armament Krupp 
evolves, sat in a solemn circle and looked com- 
posedly upon the insignificant Fawan. Did 
we rise to the occasion? No. It takes five 
years and five millions to build a battleship; 
the newspaper does things in days on a few 
thousand. But we didn't let that worry us. 

"The admiral says you may come alongside," 
wailed the megaphone. 

With that the port guns of the flagship' 
swung to in their barbettes, so the Fawan 
could slide alongside without rumpling her 
nose. There on the bridge stood the admiral 
in the centre of his stafif, gaudy with gold 
aiguillettes. And I on my bridge squinted up 
at him and felt my back bristle with American 
bluff. He had long whiskers, a long face and 
a long body. He towered above all his offi- 
cers and his pale intellectual countenance made 
him look like a Spaniard, not a Japanese. It 
was not Togo, of course, and I felt the hurt 
of misplaced confidence surge over me, but I 
was polite to him, just the same as if he had 
been the Commander-in-chief. 



184 The Events Man. 

"Where are you going?'* said he. 

"Up the Yalu," said L 

"Have you papers ?" 

"Yes. I have a permit from Tokyo signed 
by General Kodama, but it has not yet reached 
me, and meanwhile I have a letter from your 
Consul in Chefoo." 

"You may go," said the calm, almost cold, 
intellectual voice, "but keep away from the 
coast. It is lined with mechanical mines and 
I cannot be responsible for your safety there. 
At night keep close in port, for our torpedo 
boats are very vigilant and I cannot be re- 
sponsible for your safety then.'* 

"Thank you, sir." 

"I am sorry I cannot receive you in my 
cabin, but I am engaged just now in my official 
duties, so I must say good-bye." 

Almost as the words left him the five turned 
slowly, majestically and floated on. 

"Who was that?" I turned to Perkis. 

"Dewa," he said. Then he led me to the 
wheel house and showed me the log. There 
written on it in Japanese was : "Examined by 
the Yakuma" The skipper had had the savvy 
to get the petty officer's fist on the log and 



A Miss in the Dark. 185 

with that we could put any small watch dog 
off the scent. 

'We'd best anchor in Thornton Haven to- 
night," said I. "The torpedoers won't catch 
us there." So for Thornton Haven we put 
We had proceeded not more than two knots 
when another war vessel hove in sight. She 
overhauled us and we were boarded again. 
But this was only a pitiful little second class 
cruiser, and after my experience of the morn- 
ing who could expect me to be more than civil ? 
A dinky subaltern, plainly itching to show his 
authority, came up and informed us we could 
proceed no farther. 

"But we have the authority of the admiral," 
said I. 

"Oh," said he, and seemed amused, but not 
impressed. Whereat I produced the log and 
he was staggered. It was not even necessary 
to spring my chit from the Consul. He 
climbed drearily over the side and flew his 
kite. 

But being stopped again knocked us out of 
Thornton Haven, for, with the perversity of 
sea weather in those latitudes, the bright sun 
had now been displaced by lowering skies. A 



1 86 The Events Man. 

mist was sifting down and a heavy fog was 
blowing, in. Night threatened to catch us in 
the open sea, and in addition to the torpedo 
boats and the mines, I had to face still another 
dash to high spirits. The last officer had in- 
formed me, not without jibe, when he found 
his occupation of policeman tampered with, 
that the waters we then were in had just been 
included in the proclamation issued to the 
Powers closing that portion of the high seas 
to international navigation. So the Fawan, in 
direct disobedience of the admiral's advice, 
faced a night at sea. 

The fog drifted in so heavily that by 8:30 I 
could not see the light on the masthead, nor 
could I even catch sight of Perkis' face when 
he stood away from me on the bridge. We 
had to close the port lights to shut the reflec- 
tion from the skipper's eyes and drifted back 
and forth helplessly in the murk of fog and 
darkness. I said nothing to the skipper. He 
said nothing to me. This went on for hours — 
one — two — three. 

"You'd better take a shut-eye," said he, at 
last. 

"I'll stay up," I replied. "You go below." 



A Miss in the Dark. 187 

"No. ril stay," said he. And we both stay- 
ed, wearily pacing back and forth, throbbing 
with the engines, saying nothing to one an- 
other of the danger each felt, both fearful that 
the next instant the Fawan would be rammed 
by one of those devils going at a thirty-knot 
clip. Each side had its own signals, privately 
known to each, neither of which we knew, so 
we were in momentary danger of being 
rammed through mistake by either, or sunk on 
purpose by both. 

With dawn the fog lifted a bit and I said to 
the skipper: "I guess old Dewa was bluffing 
us. Do you think there is anything in that 
mine story he gave us ?" 

"No," said the skipper. "I don't believe 
they'd line the coast with mines." 

At that moment I detected smoke far on the 
horizon, perhaps twenty miles away. "It's 
Pitzewo," said the skipper. 

"Pull in for it, then," said I, "and we'll see 
the army landing." 

I went below to bang off a story 9n my type- 
writer, quite relieved that we had escaped the 
night, and wondering that even the admiral of 
the fleet should string us like any subaltern of 



1 88 The Events Man. 

the line. I had been there less than half an 
hour when — ^bang! went the wheel just above 
my head. Zip — zip — zip she turned three 
times full and the Fawan swung in her tracks, 
head about. At the same moment the engines 
stopped and I rushed on deck. 

"Look there!" said Perkis, pointing ahead. 
There, some twenty feet away, drifting lazily 
with the tide, whose sea-green wash colored 
it now olive and now jet black, lay a swaying 
dark bulk just below the level. 

"It's a mine !" I cried, and began surveying 
her with bland curiosity. Unlike the Russian 
spikes her arms were small nubs. I wonder- 
ed if nubs would respond to the touch as quick- 
ly as would spikes. Then I remembered that 
six Chinamen in a village on our island had 
carried one of these to Japanese headquarters, 
looking for reward, had grown curious even 
as I, had pulled one of those nubs, and — curi- 
osity was satisfied, but the families wailed. 

"But look there," said Perkis, pointing still 
further ahead and slightly to port. It was an- 
other mine, and, far in behind, floated the stem 
of a junk, gnarled as if hit by lightning. 

"And there — and there — and there," he 



A Miss in the Dark. 189 

called. I counted them — six — in a progressive 
row. 

"That was no bluff Old Dewa gave us." 

"Guess not/' said I. 

"Narrow escape, my boy/' said Perkis. 
"Do you see that those are laid so that no 
vessel could possibly get through this channel, 
and do you know that this is the officially 
charted channel, the one way that every boat 
going to Pitsewo must follow?" 

"But how have they pulled the transports 
in?" 

"Through a new channel, clear off up by the 
Yalu," said he, pointing North, and I looked 
vainly in where that smoke was now quite 
visible, to where the sixty thousand were pre- 
paring to advance on Nanshan. The quest 
was hopeless. 

"Look here," said Perkis, "do you see what 
a narrow escape we have had? This is just 
half an hour of low tide. Two hours earlier 
or two hours later and we should not have seen 
those mines. There's a thirteen-foot fall here. 
Now a destroyer draws ten feet — just our 
draught — and so the Japs have anchored them 
at just the depth that will make them efficient 



190 The Events Man. 

most of the time. We have skated within an 
hour or two of death." 

"I guess we'd better go back to Fawan 
Haven and think it over," said I — and Perkis 
agreed. 

There were some black goats to be seen 
above the cHffs and we went off after them with 
Martini-Henrys, but at the first shot the na- 
tives cried so piteously we quit. It was a mean 
thing to shoot them for sport, for those goats 
were nearly all the assets the islanders had — 
the goats, seaweed and fish. Then we saw a 
whale in the ofiing and went after it in the 
cutter. It winked at us with a sleepy old eye, 
turned its engines about, and put its screw full 
speed ahead, while we kept blazing after it 
each time it rose to blow. Gradually it dis- 
tanced us, and we came back tired for a quick 
run to Chefoo in the morning. It was too late 
to go before dark. 

''You'll never know how near you came to 
being sunk last night." This was a pilot of my 
acquaintance talking to me three months later 
in the Beach Hotel in Chefoo. Up to that time 
I had told no one of our escapade in the fog 
while the skipper and I stood all night on the 



A Miss in the Dark. 191 

bridge, neither speaking to the other apprecia- 
tion of the embarrassing situation. Then he 
told me the other side of the death we faced. 

"I was working for the Russians out of Port 
Arthur," he said, "And that night we started 
with the fastest torpedo boat they had to sneak 
up the coast in the fog and try for some trans- 
ports. The mission pulled nothing and on 
the way down I was off the bridge — ^below for 
a drink or something — when word came hur- 
riedly to me to get back quick. 'Here's a Jap. 
We're going to sink her,' the boy said. Istood 
hand on the key, steam ahead, half speed, all 
lights out. The crew were all to quarters, the 
torpedo was in her tube and another minute 
you would have been in — well, I rang astern 
and cried : 

''Don't do that ! It's an American dispatch 
boat." 

"How do you know?" the lieutenant at my 
side angrily asked. 

"It's her funnel — tall as a dynamo factory 
chimney" said I. "There's none other like it on 
the coast." He sighed heavily at the game 
gone, turned below and swore in Russian at 



192 The Events Man. 

the boy who stumbled over him on the dark 
companion way. 

"It was only the space of sixty seconds be- 
tween the Fawan and — ^you'll never be nearer 
the bottom than that night, boy." 



THE SINKING OF A BATTLESHIP. 



. CHAPTER XI. 

The officers show signs of mutiny, we see the 
bombardment from Kerr Bay, hear gigantic explo- 
sions oflf Port Arthur and run afoul of devilish tor- 
pedo boats — the Hatsuse sunk. 

The Fawan now began to feel the loss of 
MacDonnell. Not that Perkis was not a good 
skipper and a brave fellow. He was both. We 
needed more. We wanted a faultless skipper 
who would do for pay and the love of adven- 
ture what a torpedo boat captain did for love of 
country. Still, I had Perkis and Cromarty and 
they were not without fine points, brave 
enough for all ordinary wear, and veterans of 
deck and shot, both. I utter no blame — only 
regret. 

Now succeeded strenuous times — eight 
cruises in two weeks — among the mines off 
Dalny, through the great bombardments, up to 
the verge of a sea battle, seeing which, I felt, 
could alone justify the existence of the Fawan. 
Yet a Shanghai paper was kind enough to say 
once during those memorable times that the 
little boat paid for herself if she only took 
pains — which she well did — ^to record accur- 
ately the location, by minute and second of 



196 The Events Man. 

latitude, of all the floating mines about Pechili 
and Korea Bay. Through the next month I 
cabled to the ports and the Powers the direct 
existence of some hundreds of these, plainly 
outside of territorial waters. 

But before we started again we needed the 
new signal code. Shanghai was too far off, so 
I tore the leaf flying them from the rear of 
Lyons' Flag Almanac and went to the Chink 
flagmaker in Chefoo for dups. "When can I 
have them?" I asked. "And what will they 
cost?" 

"Six days, one hundred fifty." 

"That's too much money and I must have 
them at midnight," said I. 

"No can do. No can do," he howled like a 
stuck pig. But when he saw that I meant it, he 
promised them for one A. M. of the following 
morning and for a straight hundred. I went 
around in the afternoon and saw his whole 
crew of fifteen bushelmen floundering in dabs 
of ribbon every colour of the rainbow and the 
master-man himself prostrate over the Lyons' 
Almanac. Shortly after midnight he came off 
to the Fawan in a sampan, bearing a bushel 



The Sinking of a Battleship. 197 

basket full of fluttering vari-colored ensigns — 
and got his hundred. 

At one fifteen we weighed, so as to reach the 
mine zone by daylight, at two we breakfasted 
in the cabin — Perkis, Cromarty and I. Then I 
accompanied Cromarty on a tour of inspection, 
rubbering into everything, to look at the steam 
gauges and see how the valves were working. 
Then to the bridge where I stood by the skipper 
till daylight. This was the usual program, fol- 
lowed without let for four months. 

That dawn we found ourselves oflf Round 
Island — cursed by the bark of guns. It was 
off to the north, invisible, mysterious, mon- 
strous! As we bowled along, perhaps three 
miles out of Dalny, it suddenly came to me 
what we had stumbled upon, the fleet's co- 
operation with the army in the demolition of 
the northern defences. They were just around 
the corner in Kerr Bay, tearing the lining from 
the hillsides with long shells hurled from the 
slim noses of their naval pieces. 

"Run her in around the corner," said I to 
the skipper, keen as I was for the fray. Then 
he balked and there began the tussle between 
us that never ended. 



198 The Events Man. 

'We'd better stop, sir," said he. "That is, 
if you ask my advice. This is the real thing." 

"I didn't ask your advice," I repHed hotly. 
"And I want you to go on. I didn't come out 
here ten thousand miles to hear shots around 
the corner." 

"You can endanger your own life," said he 
calmly, "But you have no right to endanger the 
lives of the men on this boat." 

There was but one reply. The law gave him 
absolute control at sea. I saw cajolery, not 
force would — might win, so I called Cromarty 
and we had a conference on the bridge. 

"Look here, Chief," said I, "I don't believe 
there's any danger over there. They're not in 
action with another fleet. It's all land work — 
just tossing shells into the earthworks. Not a 
shot comes to sea. If we run up around the 
corner and hold well off shore we can see like 
we were in a box at the theatre— and no 
chance." 

Old Cromarty scratched his head and looked 
at his feet. 

"I dunno," said he, "I didn't hire out on this 
job to go into battle. I thought it was just to 
carry in dispatches. I'd never come if I'd 



The Sinking of a Battleship. 199 

thought there was going to be shells and war- 
ships in it." 

"Now look here," said I in my most concilia- 
tory manner, "You fellows just run the boat 
around that point — just a little way round the 
point and stand out to sea. Nothing can harm 
you there, and if we don't see it then I'll agree 
to come back." 

"All right — just around the point," said Per- 
kis, and grudgingly turned to the telegraph, 
while Cromarty stumbled below, grumbling in 
his mustache. 

The Fawan went half speed ahead and sort of 
stumbled around that corner. This was to be 
my first sight of the fleet in action, and what 
a picture of battle I conceived — disorder, con- 
sternation, wreck smoke, terror and blood! 
That was before we rounded the corner. I 
was not quite so green as to expect to see men 
running down the forecastles, sword brandish- 
ing. I don't know exactly what I did want to 
see, now I come to think of it, but I surely 
wanted to see something. 

What I saw was smoke — just smoke, com- 
ing in vagrant puffs at rare intervals from a 
number of dim, dull ships. It was a kind of 



200 The Events Man. 

dream battle, like one of those etchings these 
impressionist painters make. There were five 
ships — evidently Dewa's squadron — lying off 
from the shore in no particular order, all slight- 
Jjy broadside to. The air was a bit hazy, 
enough to dim definition about the cruiser lines. 
When we first turned in sight they might have 
been mere phanton ships — as they seemed. 
After about fifteen minutes a ring of smoke 
blew from the side of the nearest, the vitreous, 
thin stuff shooting far and the thick white body 
hanging close, as when the amateur cigar 
smoker throws his first long puff out quickly to 
get rid of it only to find the dense body curling 
back around his face. I fancied I could even 
see the shell spring easily to its mark which it 
must have found almost as soon as the sound 
touched us. The reverberation came in with a 

book — bo-om — ^bo-o — o m ; three richo- 

chets. Then a long interval passed and a gen- 
tle swell lifted the Fawan imperceptibly as the 
tide creeps up, lapping an old hulk. 

Then silence in which the phantom ships 
moved not, when from another the amateur 
would blow his hasty smoke into the misty air, 
while the distant bo-o-om would blend and bur- 



The Sinking of a Battleship. 201 

row with the other. No reply, no haste, ap- 
parently not even premeditation. The five, in 
ragged echelon, were but giving the crew gun 
play and ridding themselves of cumbersome 
scrap steel that lazy morning. This reflection 
came to my disgusted news sense, when I de- 
tected far off on shore a low crackle, pastoral 
as a village Fourth of July celebration heard 
from the hills. The infantry was going into 
action against the trenches which the fleet was 
tearing down. 

That was the weakest imitation of a battle I 
ever saw or heard of. I could only hurry off 
to cable that the imperial navy and army com- 
bined were driving the Russians from the north 
Dalny defences. Had I landed for details the 
crew would have mutinied on the spot. Be- 
sides, he who sees and runs away will live to 
tell another day. 

We were running for Chefoo, abeam Port 
Arthur, but well out when I heard that which 
put the Fawan right about and stirred in me 
again the arch longing that itched the blood 
of every fighting man in the Far East that year. 
It was a terrific explosion, nothing small or un- 
developed or questionable about it, at all. No 



202 The Events Man. 

one could have mistaken it for even a twelve- 
inch gun. Nothing but a mine or a dynamite 
bomb could have fetched that report. I put 
my hand on the skipper's arm and he* stopped 
the Fawan in a dozen times her length. Be- 
fore we had felt the stern twist of the screw 
there came another explosion, seemingly louder 
than the first, though I suppose it was the same 
thing intensified by our expectancy. 

We lay in one of those characterless seas, 
non-commital as a Japanese diplomatist. You 
find them in that part of the world almost any 
time of the year, and the one only other place I 
know of them is in the North sea. They're as 
smooth and quiet as glass, but you can't see 
any horizon. The mist steals over you on all 
sides, about a mile and a half distant, leaving 
you in the centre of a great grey bowl topped 
with blue. There is nothing sullen or angry 
about such a sea. It simply puts limitless dis- 
couragement on every effort, mocking sight 
and energy with the impalpable mockery of 
time and fate. , 

"Turn her head in, skipper," said I. And 
then he bucked again, but I insisted. "This is 
business," I doggedly persisted. "We're on no 



The Sinking of a Battleship. 203 

pleasure trip. I've got to see that fight, or 
whatever it is, or bust.'' 

So he sHd the v^heel over with a grouchy 
bang and we glided half speed into those worse 
than shark-infested waters. We had but start- 
ed when a devil of a row broke out of the mist. 
It smashed up so big and lifelike that again 
my battle scent in embryo sniffed a glorious 
show. There were plenty of shots — short, 
snappy and rapid — with the angry fuzz and 
pitch of small beasts scrapping lustily. Three- 
inch guns or quick-firers, I thought they must 
be, or possibly twelve-pounders, and these they 
afterward proved to be — twelve pounders. 

Cromarty had come on deck and was loung- 
ing below, his arms folded, bitterly chewing 
his cigar and muttering something about his 
being a married man, with a child at home, and 
that he hadn't signed to come to no battle, that 
all he wanted to do was to carry dispatches. 
Finally he looked up to where I was on the 
bridge and called out : 

"How much farther in are you going, any- 
how?" 

"A bit," I replied, cheerily, but at that Perkis 
bucked, lay down on the wheel and said we'd 



204 The Events Man. 

gone far enough. He called my attention to 
the fact that if the tide of battle suddenly veer- 
ed our way it would catch us and we would be 
powerless with a ten-knot boat against twenty- 
and thirty-knotters. 

''But/' I replied hastily, "Here's a fight right 
under our noses. It's impossible to pass up at 
this stage of the game. We've got to go in. 
That's all there is about it. I'll stand for no 
Kerr Bay dodge again." 

"If you go in farther under the guns you'll 
get sunk," said he calmly. "We're not more 
than six miles from Port Arthur now." And 
it later proved he was right. We were about 
six miles from Golden Hill. 

So we compromised and he agreed to stand 
in another knot and wait developments. But 
there is a point where enterprise ceases and 
recklessness begins, and even my wild, boyish 
fever had its apogee. Presently the Fawan 
came to a stop of her own accord, Perkis will- 
ing, and Cromarty sitting tight. I said noth- 
ing, praying — or as near that as a war corres- 
pondent ever comes — that the fog would lift. 

But now out of the haze spat a huge gob of 
black smoke, and behind that some more, and 



The Sinking of a Battleship. 205 

behind that more — and still more. It didn't 
take long for us to see what it was coming out 
of that horizonless horizon : — destroyers at the 
height of their thirty-knot speed ! They were 
cutting through the water as knives rip 
through wax, little geysers spurting over the 
bows of each. 

"Send a boat/' cried the signal from the fore 
one as soon as we were spotted. I slipped my 
precious papers in my shirt, had the cutter 
quickly lowered and hurried off to meet her, as 
she slowed down, about a quarter of a mile 
away. The feel of the air told me it was an 
unhealthy spot and I knew they were not in the 
jolliest mood at the forced stop. Still it was 
business for me. 

As we ran alongside they threw an anchor 
line out, twisted it about our bows and towed us 
in. She was a long, slim, black bitch, with 
short, chubby funnels, and a sort of bulldog air 
that distinctly discouraged familiarity. I 
scrambled aboard up a nasty tarred rope and 
looked down a dinky, cramped iron ladder that 
led to the engine room. They have no con- 
veniences, only necessities on these destroyers. 
The men are devils doing hellish work — heroes 



2o6 The Events Man. 

in martyrdom, if you please — and they ask for 
neither comfort nor luxury. A lot of good it 
would do them to ask ! 

The minute I stepped on deck I knew some- 
thing was wrong. These were desperate men 
if there ever were such. Here was no phantom 
battle on a painted ocean. These fellows had 
been close up against the real stuff. An of- 
ficer came staggering out of one of those man- 
holes that pass for stairs on a destroyer and 
a lot of sailors stood about looking at me with 
that same lugubrious tone that can be observed 
at home among the people who attend execu- 
tions. They looked as if they would like to 
break the news that I was to be shot the next 
minute. 

The officer in heavy thigh sea boots had not 
been shaved for a month. His hair was thick, 
matted and dishevelled and through the long,' 
deep lines in his face I could read lineaments 
that spelled catastrophe and woe heaped upon 
weeks of soul-tearing work. It was not work 
that bowed him down. That was part of his 
game. It was not death that hurt him so. 
That, too, he clasped as fellow. He looked as 
if he had not slept since baby-hood and the 



The Sinking of a Battleship. 207 

heavy cords of his neck showed out taut and 
fierce from the dirty collar of his rough shirt 
thrown ruggedly away. No ordinary sea peril 
had hurled him to such dismay — this king of 
sea spirits daring as any wild, weird gnomes 
that ever haunted the deep! People tell you 
the Japanese have no emotions, show no hurt, 
feel no disaster. They never saw that com- 
mander of that black destroyer as I saw him 
that mysterious grim morning under the un- 
seen guns of Port Arthur. 

Into this circle of kill- joys I stepped gaily and 
smiled pleasantly. But the smile sort of froze 
and the gaiety died away. Then I folded my 
arms and waited. 

*'What are you doing here?" said the voice 
of the avenging angel. 

"I have a dispatch boat,'' said I. 

''You're not allowed here," said he, with the 
same politeness that is seen in the quick closing 
of a steel trap. 

''But I have a permit," I showed him the chit 
from the consul. 

"O!" His courtesy was the same that the 
steel trap would show if you tried to break 
away. He turned to talk with a subaltern. 



2o8 The Events Man. 

"What was that firing?'' 

"There has been no firing this morning," 
said he, without turning to look at me. 

"But I heard firing — two big explosions, 
then lots of small shot — and my officers heard 
it. Perhaps you were not in this neighbour- 
hood." 

"Yes. We have been here — this morning — 
and yesterday — and the day before — for some 
months in fact." He passed his hand wearily 
over his face, shut his jaw still tighter and look- 
ed again at me with those deep, hollow and in- 
scrutable eyes. 

"But," I cried hastily, "You are mistaken. 
I've been listening to it all morning, sitting 
right off there in my boat." 

He turned to his subaltern. More Japanese 
jabber. 

"You are right," said he at length. "There 
was some firing — a little, but it was only the 
forts firing at us. They hit nothing. We were 
on reconnaissance." 

Here was an opening. I tried to be jolly. 
You might as well have tried to be jolly with 
a corpse. Even as I spoke he turned square 
away to give some orders, and, in a jiffy, a 



The Sinking of a Battleship. 209 

dingy was going over the side like a pancake 
flopped on a griddle. 

"What are you going to do?" asked I. 

"I am sending an officer to search your 
boat." 

To tell the truth I was stumped. Here I had 
come with malice toward none, charity for all, 
and been handed the proper ice pitcher. I turn- 
ed to go, but reached out my hand for a part- 
ing shake first. He looked at it as much as to 
say, "What's that for?" but finally got on. I 
jumped over into my cutter and told the boys 
to beat the dingy, moske the cost. 

I went up one side of the Fawan as the subal- 
tern climbed up the other, but I beat him on 
deck and stood there smiling and ready for him 
when he appeared. I was for showing him 
how this receiving on board ship should be 
done, ordered drinks, and tried to make him 
comfortable, but he received every advance I 
made with that same irrelevance which I had 
observed so crudely shown on his own boat. 
One cannot expect a child well bred when it 
sees no manners at home. Perkis lugged him 
off to the log and showed him that fist from the 
Yakuma and it greased, a bit, the wheels of 



2IO The Events Man. 

intercourse. I stayed, all told, perhaps a min- 
ute and a half. Then he slipped over the side 
and the oars of his dingy were in dip before he 
struck the seat. They covered the quarter of a 
mile in better than intercollegiate time. Be- 
fore he had even reached the destroyer she was 
under way. As he slid alongside rings were 
tossed over his bow and stern, made taut with 
a jerk, and, as the davits snapped him up and 
before he had fairly left water, the fat little 
monster was under full speed. By the time he 
stepped on deck she was a mile away. 

But they left their tale behind. There, from 
the rear destroyer were towing three lifeboats 
— big ones of twelve or sixteen oars such as 
only battleships or cruisers of the first-class 
use — great thirty-foot cutters. The paint was 
scratched off their sides and some of the oars 
were smashed. Yes — and there on the stern 
of the first I read in ideograph that one of the 
only three I knew: — Hatsuse. The next de- 
stroyer towed three more and the third two, 
eight all told, and on the last of all I spotted 
another well-known ideograph : — Yashima! 
Curiously deserted, curiously alive, eloquent of 
disaster, flotsam of battle or wreck, present 



The Sinking of a Battleship. 211 

and terrible, they swept on into the mist, still 
wrapped in inviolable secrecy. 

The next morning I stepped into the con- 
sulate at Chef 00. Old John Fowler greeted me. 
"There's a rumor," said he, "that the Japanese 
have lost two battleships — the Asahi and the 
Shikishima" 

"It's true," said I, "only they're the Hatsuse 
and the Yashima" 

The cable to Chicago that day informed the 
world first of the loss of the only two battle- 
ships sacrificed by Japan in her entire history. 

After I had told Fowler about our adven- 
ture he said: "Boy, you are mighty lucky to 
get out. There were twenty or thirty torpedo 
boats from both sides knocking about in that 
fog. If one of them had seen the Fawan, 
while they were in action, you would never 
have lived to tell it." 

This interested me, so I told Perkis. This 
was where I made the fatal mistake. 



THE STRIKE. 



CHAPTER XII. 

Led by the skipper and the chief the crew strikes 
to escape the great risk, I ship a crew of pirates and 
ruffians and am about to put to sea with certain 
wreck ahead when I discover loyalty of the finest 
brand. 

Then the crew, led by the skipper and the 
chief, struck. 

After the sinking of the Hatsuse we went 
on four more cruises without obvious incident, 
except that they grew worse and worse. No 
big war vessels after that came within sight 
of Port Arthur. Sixty miles away, in the Elliot 
group, they had their base and kept a patrol 
fifteen miles out, where the V of the harbour's 
mouth could be spied. The Fofwan would pass 
between this patrol and the port and each time 
we passed the men grumbled. These were 
ghastly trips. No one slept, all were constantly 
searching for mines, and though we laid up 
each night in Fawan Haven there was never 
any cease in fear of gunnery or dismay at those 
infernal scavengers, the mines. 

The Kasiiga overhauled us one day. "It's 
very dangerous,'' said the officer who came 
aboard, to the skipper and myself. "We do not 



2i6 The Events Man. 

advise you to operate. If our boats see you at 
night or in a fog they will sink you. We sunk 
a Russian tug boat that looked just like yours 
two days ago." 

Then another misplaced enterprise brought 
me more trouble. I had trained those that 
could patter pidgeon English to search for 
news every time we cast anchor. Thus the 
laute, each time we made Chefoo, passed about 
among all the junks, wending his way among 
the Chinamen he knew, in search of fresh un- 
known details from across the gulf. He found 
only that junks were constantly going down on 
the mines, or under the forts, and that friends 
of himself or some of the crew were constantly 
"among those killed." 

Finally Cromarty, thrusting his dour face in 
the cabin one night, said in a pause so thick you 
could feel it : "I've been alone upon a blockade 
runner with ammunition and powder, I've been 
captured by the French and thrown in prison, 
I ran the Fawan up and down the Peiho for 
two months under Boxer fire with a Chinese 
crew on the stroke of instant mutiny week in 
and out — ^but that's nothing. I can stand all 
that — have stood it — would go it again. But 



The Strike. 217 

I can't stand for the Fawan in her present 
frame of mind. It's too — well, its too risky, if 
you don't mind my saying it, sir." 

This was a very long speech for Cromarty 
and the effort of making it together with the 
assurance I gave him that I would wire the 
office in Chicago for orders quieted him. I 
cabled asking if I should take the Fawan un- 
der fire. The reply came: ''Not willing for 
you to take the Fawan under fire." 

With this pink assurance on a government 
telegraphic blank, I kept him steady for awhile, 
but one night we blew in under a gale and out 
of a crashing sea that had smashed down the 
aftside deck and twisted two stanchions near 
the winch till the stroke resembled a typhoon's 
play. It was a typhoon I guess. To make it 
blacker that time the laute found that two 
junks had been blown to splinters within per- 
haps a league of the course we had but just 
passed. One man only of the nineteen the two 
bore, escaped. 

I was seated in my cabin, going over the 
month's accounts, that night, when Perkis and 
Cromarty appeared. It was strange, for the 
lantern houses usually called them at that hour, 



2i8 The Events Man. 

and we were not to weigh till dawn. They both 
looked sheepish, obviously constrained. I 
thought they were drunk, but no. It was only 
embarrassment. Finally the skipper spoke. 

"WeVe been thinking it over, the Chief and 
I," said he, ''And we've decided we've got to 
quit you. No money could hire us to do this. 
We've gone so far only because we've rather 
taken a fancy to you. You've got sand, for a 
youngster, and we sort o' like the way you 
tackle this job, but we've got to draw the line 
somewhere. We no longer consider it a 
chance. If it was we'd take it. We're good 
gamblers, but it's only a question of how many 
trips — one or two perhaps — before you go 
down, sure. At least that's our judgment, 
sir." 

Perkis added the last, as he saw the frown 
on my face. If it was bluff or hire they want- 
ed I could hand it to them. "How much of a 
raise do you want ?" Said I, with the coldness 
of steel bar pickled in ice. It was a mistake. 
I could see that the minute I said it. Cromarty 
looked at me with a sad paternal smile and 
Perkis corrected : 

"No. We're satisfied with the money," said 



The Strike. 219 

he, "It's good pay you're giving us, but the 
plain fact is we don't want to get killed." 

"You apparently think," said I, seeing that 
nothing but straight talk would do, "That I'm 
a crazy fool who wants to get killed." Their 
grim silence, lit by a nod of assent, seemed to 
indicate that I was talking now more to the 
point. I could see they quite agreed with me. 

"Now you're responsible only for your- 
selves," I continued. "I'm responsible not only 
for myself, but for you, and the crew and the 
boat that carries not a dollar of insurance. I 
know the risks. I've weighed them. And I 
think it's a fair deal we're going on. Still, per- 
sonally, I'd be tickled to death to give up the 
Fawan, but we've finished only half of a three 
months' charter and I can't afford to stick the 
paper like that — letting 'em pay for a dead boat 
a month and a half." 

I was not cutting ice. I could see that. "I'll 
tell you what I'll do," said I finally. "I'll put it 
up to the ofiice. Let them decide. Meanwhile 
we'll take a quiet little run over to Fawan 
Haven and when we come back the answer will 
be here — how's that, eh?" 

They assented grudgingly and trudged off 



220 The Events Man. 

topside, but I could see the spell of mastery was 
broken and I put in a blue night. We made a 
conservative trip to Fawan Haven, without 
profit, and on return found the inevitable tele- 
graphic pinkness. ^'Operate the Fawan with 
the least risk possible," it said. 

"No," said Perkis. "We stand pat on this. 
Sorry, but we consider it only common pru- 
dence. It's not our war." 

"All right," said I, coldly, and I made out 
the pay vouchers for them. They were for 
bidding a fond farewell, but I passed them the 
mit. Then they shuffled out of the cabin and 
left me for a time to think over the situation. 
I was properly disgusted. Here I was, just 
running down the wind with big news, fairly 
picking up the light on the coast of scoops, 
when my trusties turn up with cold feet. To 
add to my peculiar comfort that night, there 
was handed me a letter from the office in which 
I read : "At the end of the charter release the 
Fawan, at which time your services will be dis- 
pensed with." Slighting allusions from the 
Bigger Man had knifed me at home, I later 
learned. So I faced, not only mutiny from be- 
low, but dismissal from above. After awhile 



The Strike. 221 

Perkis poked his nose into the cabin and asked : 
"Well, I suppose you'll take the Fawan back 
to Taku now." 

*'No," said I without raising or turning my 
head. 'We'll weigh for Fawan Haven as soon 
as I can pick a crew from off shore." 

He shrugged his shoulders and disappeared, 
only to return a moment later. "The Chief and 
ril hang around and keep an eye on the boat till 
you pick up your crew, if you'd like, sir," said 
he. 

"As you wish," said I. 

Presently Cromarty came down. With the 
same sheepish air he grudgingly said: "The 
engine room crew will leave when I do, if you 
don't mind my saying it, sir." 

"There are other engine room crews on the 
coast," I replied, without looking up. 

"But the deck crew is goin' to leave." 

"I suppose there are other deck crews, too." 

Cromarty evidently was not prepared for 
this. He had expected me to wilt at the first 
fire. He shuffled around the cabin a bit, pay- 
ing marked attention to the chromos of "Dewey 
entering Manila Bay," which hung fore and 
aft the centre table. Finally he blurted out: 



222 The Events Man. 

"I suppose you think I got them to strike, but 
its' not so. I told them to stay on but they won't 
do it. You'd better talk with them yourself." 

"Call them in," said I, sharply, without look- 
ing up. 

They shuffled in, nine from the engine room, 
eleven from the deck, and stood about con- 
strained, huddled in the corners like a lot of 
sheep. I was sitting with my back to them, en- 
grossed in the papers before me. I waited till 
all the shuffling had ceased, and gave them a 
few minutes of grace to get well oiled with 
shame before I looked around. At length I 
faced them with stern unconcern. 

"Well, you'll stay with me — eh?" said I to 
the bos'n, studying him nonchalantly and pass- 
ing my gaze directly into his eye. His faded 
and sought the floor. 

"No can do. No can do," he wailed. 

"How about you?" I turned savagely to 
the laute. His tanned old Chinese face turned 
up voluble and sweaty and he poked at me his 
thin neck (I couldn't help thinking what a good 
chance it offered to the beheader's sword, hav- 
ing seen an execution of spies two weeks be- 
fore), as he chattered: 



The Strike. 223 

"Boxer can do. This no can do. No blong 
ploper. Plenty fliends have got Takuside. 
Junk strikee mine. Two piecee man get away. 
Nother piecee alee same makee die. Master 
better go Takuside Fazvan." 

I ignored the talk as beneath contempt and 
told the cabin boy to call Meyer. 

"'Captain Meyer," said I when he appeared. 
"You are going to stay with me, are you not? 
You understand what it is. We operate as we 
have, no more, no less. I'll sign you as skip- 
per." The old man was wagging his shaggy 
white head. He had turned his seventieth 
birthday the week before. 

"Yes," he mumbled "Til stay." 

Now Cromarty appeared again, beaming. 
Apparently he wanted to help all he could. 
"The cook — he'll stay," announced the Chief 
with alacrity. 

"Where's Choosan ? Bring him in," I cried. 

Choosan appeared, pock marked, with a 
slimy pigtail, and grinning all over his sly fat 
phiz. I well knew he'd go to hell a thousand 
times before he'd relinquish the squeeze he was 
pulling each trip. I suppose he is retired by 
this time out of the profits he made on the 



224 The Events Man. 

Fawan, "Velly good master," he called shrilly 
to my gruff question. "Can do." 

So there I was — with a skipper and a cook, 
one so near death by time limit that it made 
little difference to him how he was pushed over 
the brink, the other so fattening out of the 
Fawan's purse that he would have cheerfully 
gone to bottom serene in the knowledge that 
his family to remote generations was well 
cared for out of galley sweepings. 

I was determined to operate that boat if I 
had to pick up a scratch crew and go to the 
wheel myself. I gave it out around Chefoo 
what I was looking for, and the port riff-raff 
began drifting my way. Well I knew that no 
sailors of repute could be mine. First I signed 
a Scandanavian as mate, a desperate character 
he was, who had led a life of versatile activity 
in all quarters of the globe, and I commission- 
ed him to pick up a crew. 

At tiffin time he led them on deck — my new 
crew. Never before nor since have I seen such 
a lot of pirates. They had been scraped from 
the four quarters of China, but their heads had 
not been scraped. That duty, which the hum- 
blest Oriental considers before his chow, they 



The Strike. 225 

had one and all neglected, and stood before me 
with unshaven polls, bearing on their lousy 
pates a lush growth, like the bristles of fresh 
swine. Faces out of that crowd still leer at me 
with a nightmare's malediction. Cut, ragged, 
dirty, shiftless, unshaven, grinned in alternate 
threat and sycophantic smirk. I felt like 
a two-spot when I looked at those fellows. 
The head man stood in front, a fat rascal, 
with a tremendous paunch rolling great flesh 
away from a hairy chest not quite covered by 
the denim crash he slung rakishly across his 
shoulders. His powerful sardonic chin poked 
at me from beneath small, colorless pig eyes. 

"Can do. Can do," he answered, as I put 
the questions to him, and his gang gave hollow 
consent with much muttering and grinning. 

But I hadn't the heart to engage them on the 
spot, so I told them to come next morning, at 
nine, for my answer. Cromarty and Perkis 
were standing on the bridge during my collo- 
quy, looking with sedate interest down upon the 
deck scene. The Fawan was home to them, and 
I fancied I felt their resentment, as they saw 
what meant business in the delivery of their 
nestplace over to the black flag. 



226 The Events Man. 

I was so desperate I think I would have gone 
to sea, even if certain wreck was ahead, but 
now I began to grow afraid. There would be 
but three white men on the boat, the Scandina- 
vian, old Meyer, and myself. Meyer was the 
only one I could trust, and he was too old for 
use in a fight. Suppose that gang suddenly took 
it into its head to cabbage the Fawanf , In this 
hour of dismal dread I went to Fowler. 

"You've got to help me now," said I to him, 
when I had stated the case. "Fve got a crew 
that will go through the jaws of death, but you 
never saw such villains, and the fact is, I'm 
afraid to go to sea with them alone. I want 
you to get some marines from the New Orleans 
to go along with me on the Fawan, so I'll be 
safe if the crew mutinies." 

He promised to do what he could. Admiral 
Sterling was then in port with two vessels of 
the American Navy, and I looked for solution 
of some of my troubles there. But then, it oc- 
curred to me, that even if the crew stayed put, 
I might run afoul with the engines. I must 
have a white engineer. That was all there was 
about it — I must have him. No Chinaman 
would do. We might get to sea, find the engines 



The Strike. 22y 

primed, and before we'd know it they'd blow 
the cylinder heads off, or God knows what 
might happen. Cromarty would swear, of 
course, that they were all right when he left 
them, and then I would be in for unknown dam- 
ages. I wired, consequently, to Farnham Boyd, 
in Shanghai, who built the Fawan : "Must have 
new engineer, five hundred dollars a month.'* 

"Frank Kennedy will accept job, starting 
two days," came the answer. 

By this time all Chefoo was advising me 
what to do. Young Sterling, a son of the Ad- 
miral, a fine chap, wanted to go along, but his 
dad wouldn't let him, yet he gave me an idea of 
moment. If I let Kennedy come on without 
telling him why Perkis and Cromarty had quit, 
Sterling said, the new engineer might strike, as 
the others had, when he found out the situa- 
tion, and that would leave me worse than be- 
fore, because the week of passage waiting 
would be wasted. For this reason I wired: 
"Kennedy must understand Cromarty and Per- 
kis leaving on account of risk." 

In four hours the answer came. Kennedy 
passed it up. Of course, he would, though the 
sum offered was twice ordinary first-class pay. 



228 ^ The Events Man. 

Perkis and Cromarty were the best-known, and 
the most fearless men on the coast. As I passed 
down to the cutter waiting at the sHp, Fowler 
met me. His face was long, and I presaged 
bad news. 

"It can't be done,'' he said, simply, and 
shrugged his shoulders as he came up. "You're 
under a British flag, and the Admiral can't let 
you have marines." 

It was evening. The Chefoo amethystine 
blue filtered through the balmy air. The moun- 
tains cut gorgeous discs against the sunset. 
The bay limned out a scimiter of might and 
glory beyond. I neither saw nor felt these 
beauties. That villainous crew were coming 
for final word in the morning, and there lay 
before me abandonment of my greatest quest, 
or, almost sure disaster if, lucklessly, I persisted 
in following its trail. 

I climbed on deck. There were Perkis and 
Cromarty still lounging on the bridge, enjoy- 
ing the cool of the evening. This, too, was un- 
usual, but I paid them no attention. I did not 
even glance at them as I passed to my cabin, 
though I thought I detected a sudden halt in 
the conversation, and attention drifting my 



The Strike. 229 

way, a vague longing for the usual hearty salu- 
tation which it had been my wont to toss their 
way whenever I appeared. Well I knew how 
the gall would cut when they found the show 
could go on without them — the skipper and the 
chief, who had fondly looked upon themselves 
as king spirits in deeds of daring that formed 
many a chapter of whispered, awed talk in the 
pothouses of many an Eastern port. I didn't 
blame them, but I was sore. "I despise their 
attitude," I remember, is what I entered the 
night before in my diary. Still, they were the 
right sort : dear old skipper, sour old chief ! 

I was again in the cabin, again deep in the 
papers, when that same backward shuffle again 
drifted in down the stairs. Presently, the two 
appeared, unconcerned, veiling their curiosity. 
I knew they were but itching for the order to 
weigh for Taku. Then could their faces be 
held high along the coast as reckless devils, 
whose caution at the supreme moment had 
saved the day. I noticed them not. 

"Well," said Perkis, at last, after he had ex- 
hausted the possibilities of "Dewey entering 
Manila Bay?" "Going to give it up?" 

"Of course, not," said I, without looking, 



230 The Events Man. 

shifting my cigar, and yawning, as I poked 
deeper into the papers. 'The Fawan weighs 
to-morrow afternoon." 

Silence again. One or two coughs. The 
scratching of my pen, the heavy breathing of 
Cromarty. At length it seemed that "Dewey 
entering Manila Bay," held no more artistic 
secrets, for just as I was about to rise and step 
forward to my cabin, Perkis advanced. I al- 
most bumped into him, and looked as Beau 
Brummell did at the Prince of Wales, with a 
"Who's your fat friend" insolence, when he 
halted me. 

"Sit down a minute," said he, with some hu- 
mility. I but paused. He backed off. First 
he looked at my feet. Then he looked at my 
eyes. 

"We don't like to leave you — the chief and 
I," said he. 

I surveyed him shrewdly, with a penetrative 
glance. The same old gag ! Well, I was ready 
for it. What difference did a few hundred a 
month make in the game I was playing? 

"I can raise your wages," said I, with meas- 
ured alacrity. "How much do you want ?" 

"No," he said, with the sad and weary tone 



The Strike. 231 

of a friend suspected. '^You're paying good 
wages. We don't want any more pay." Then 
he advanced a bit, and I thought I detected a 
sort of paternal yearning in his voice as he 
said, throwing off for once and the only time, 
his skipper's manner: 

"If you'd only be a bit cautious !" The look 
I gave him plainly spelled derision, but it de- 
terred him not. "My boy," he cried, "we'd go 
with you, if you'd only be more cautious !" 

"Let's talk it over," said I, and we sat down. 
Then we reached the compromise. The Fawan 
was to go within sight of Port Arthur at any 
time, near enough to see the ships on the block- 
ade. If there was a battle, she was to operate 
within three miles. 

I turned to Cromarty. It was like pulling 
teeth with him, but I could see it was useless 
to question. The skipper spoke for both. 

"But how about the crew?" I asked. 

"They'll stay if I do." 

"And coal?" 

"Plenty." 

"All right," said I, and turned to the skipper. 
"We weigh at daylight." 

I could hear Cromarty^s cry, almost gay, as 



232 The Events Man. 

he ran up the forward companionway, "Num- 
ber one!" 

And the wafted reply, grateful to me at that 
moment, as a mother's caress : "Hai !" 

"Wantchee engines two o'clock !" 

"Can do." 

"Pump water." 

"Can do." 

I turned to the skipper. He was ready to 
ascend. I was about to shake his hand, but 
changed my mind. 

"Guess I need a shut eye," I yawned, as I 
turned on my heel. "Haven't been in bed for 
ten days. Good-night !" 



OUTCAST. 



1 



CHAPTER XIII. 

We train down to quick-firing precision, are taken 
in by the blockade watch, are warned from our last 
refuge, and at length get the cold shoulder from our 
only remaining friends. 

The crew then became trained like a fire- 
house company. You have heard the gong ring 
for a city fire. You have seen the laddies slip 
down the pole from upstairs, the horses leap 
into harness, and the huge apparatus go lum- 
bering down the street on the gallop — all in less 
than a minute. That is not ahead of the Fa- 
wan's spirit of ever readiness. 

We lay the next three weeks, operating un- 
der the compromise, in Fawan Haven, steam 
always ready for a three minutes' notice. A 
shot from Liaotung way, smoke in the offing, 
the lap, lap of waves cut by a torpedo boat, and 
Perkis or I, one of us being always on watch, 
would leap to the telegraph. At the instant 
sound of the gong every man sprang to his 
place, the mate's white hair rising venerable 
above the wheel, the laute's savage face cut 
coldly across the starboard quarter, against the 
blue of deep water. Up the shute came the 



236 The Events Man. 

merry tinkling of shoveling coal, the rapid slide 
of opening draughts, and soon from the funnel 
in heavy clouds poured the black smoke. In 
two minutes the engines would be head and 
astern blowing out the valves. In three the 
wake would have subsided above the last ripple 
outlining the late anchorage. In four the Fa- 
wan would be around the corner, with all the 
grand panorama of the greatest of sea battle- 
fields stretched full and fair before. 

Sometimes a torpedo attack was called. They 
came every day or two. Lying under the deck 
awnings, smoking the blackest cigar obtaina- 
ble for a quarter, feet elevated over head, 
spring just gone and the green of summer 
pulsing tremulous and near, just across the 
haven, I would suddenly leap to my feet. The 
going! Quick, to the pant of engines and 
chug of screw, see the Fawan sweep around the 
headland ! Then gaze off across the dazzle of 
brilliant sunbeams, striking aslant the gentle 
lap of whitecaps ! 

Yes, there they come, in flotilla formation, 
line ahead. We see them first by the thin- 
nest smoke on the horizon off Elliot way. 
Slowly they materialize, and the smoke seg- 



Outcast. q.-^;] 

regates into four puffs at the blue. The four 
puffs become in time twelve. The twelve arise 
into one pall of ink, below which the twelve fun- 
nels of the flotilla vomit forth their sweaty ex- 
cess. Now they sweep well within vision, and 
we can see those white slices of spray sweeping 
the decks. The boats, from dancing gnats, 
have become buzzing bees upon the water. 

Then another flotilla out of the blank haze 
of ether — perhaps half a mile behind the first. 
It, too, segregates into twelve smoke wreaths, 
hurling one valiant, if tiny, challenge at the glo- 
rious blue day. Behind that another half mile, 
then another flotilla, finally a fourth. Then even 
far behind that, leisurely pacing with long, 
space-killing swell, creep two cruisers. By the 
time these guard ships have come to a halt, 
twenty miles from the Lion's Mane, the first 
flotilla, perhaps three miles ahead, is crowding 
on full steam for its dash under the forts. 

Meanwhile there has emerged from behind 
the two cruisers, a third vessel, distinctly out of 
place among those savage little beasts that are 
bowling along, thirty miles an hour, under the 
tiny, valiant challenge. It is a converted liner, 
the Nippon Maru, headed straight for us. We 



238 The Events Man. 

lie to, and wait. She cuts along record speed, 
and before the attack is fully developed, hauls 
to, directly athwart our resting place, slows her 
engines and pauses in expectancy. It looks 
like the start of the triangular America Cup 
race, when the stake boats push out to sea, 
marking the cruising ground. This race course 
that we now look upon, in which the dash is to 
endanger lives and risk treasure, lies straight 
before us, with a vista vast and terrible. 

The course is formed by the V of the harbor 
mouth, the two cruisers and the Nippon, each 
standing for one leg of the triangle. The four 
flotillas are now half way to Port Arthur. 
Smoke had ceased pouring from the funnels of 
the cruisers. The Nippon has just lain to. 

As yet not a sound from the fortress. It lies, 
with smiling straight cliffs in grim grandeur, 
in perfect security. Never from this side will 
it fall. Only from the land, where Nogi even 
now is knocking, will it succumb. Even there 
it holds impregnable. Yes, like man himself, 
the great fortress can stand secure to the 
last, inviolate from foes without. From 
the inner worm along can she corrode and fall. 

The first flotilla disappears, swallowed in the 



Outcast. 239 

lee of the cliff line. Then the inferno breaks. 
White shoots of flame ; ragged, venomous balls 
of smoke from crevices concealed and treacher- 
ous, in the rocks above, where, from perfect 
ambush, speak coast defense batteries heavy 
enough, with one broadside, to send all of 
Togo's battleships to the bottom. To them 
there can be no reply. They issue their swift 
lightning with the omnipotent serenity of the 
Power above. The third four is gone, and 
then the fourth, until we see that Togo's flo- 
tillas have melted against these barren cliffs, as 
Nogi's battalions are even then fading into 
bleeding, shapeless rags against the rocky 
heights beyond. With painful distinctness the 
guns speak. After the first broadside the mo- 
ments are alive with haphazard shooting. No 
man can tell the effect. No man can guess. 
All is silence. Can it be else than death ? And 
what meaning can there be in the suicide of 
these sixteen fat boats? None can tell, and 
idle is the guess of wonder in this gigantic puz- 
zle, where a thousand motives conflict and in- 
tertwine. 

At length the firing dies. Out of the lee 
shadow now creeps again the pall of black, 



240 The Events Man. 

parented of twelve smoky upshoots. Blessed 
Buddha ! The first flotilla has escaped. 

The loss can be no more than twelve. We 
breathe easier. The gain is something. But 
now appears the second four, and now the third, 
until at length, sixteen again make glad our 
strained and anxious vision. This time, headed 
square our way, the four black p^alls merge in 
one, and, like the charge of an express train on 
a down grade, the squadrons sweep grandly 
upon us. 

The screw of the Nippon begins to turn. She 
is under way, but not before the first flotilla 
has rounded her stern, while, from the nearest 
boat, there slings a dingy, out of which a pow- 
der-stained officer emerges. He passes upon 
the Nippon. So that was the purpose of the 
lone liner — to receive reports. In four hours 
she will be lying under the shadow of the Mi- 
kasa, and Togo will know what the sixteen 
learned in that bold reconnaisance. 

But as they steam slowly past us we see what 
news costs ; and smash ! goes the prestige of our 
impertinent service. In the port side of the 
nearest destroyer of the second flotilla, yawns a 
great hole, barely above the water line. Al- 



Outcast. 241 

ready it is stuffed crudely with huge calks of 
hemp wadding. The rear funnel of the next is 
staggering off. What can possibly hold it on ? 
A tiny slip of pipe seems its only support. And 
in behind we see the signal mast also nearly 
down and out, its base twisted around until its 
aftside fronts the bow. 

Again we see them chase a junk. 

Not a ripple stirs the surface of that quiet 
ocean. The misty smoke of the guardship, pa- 
trolling her beat twenty miles away, is the sinj 
gle evidence of life in all that measureless ex- 
panse. When slow in the cream of the after- 
noon, out of the nowhere that lies under Che- 
foo, lazily swims into view, the lateen sails of 
a lumbering junk. With tremulous unconcern 
she tacks her plodding way abeam the Haven. 
She may have cleared for Antung. She may 
be bound for Dalny. She may — she may be full 
of contraband for the beleaguered city. 

Now quickly out of nothing springs a flo- 
tilla — and another, pouring foul soot into 
that masterpiece of Nature's painting. You 
have seen the fairy prince wave his wand in 
the transformation scene; you have seen the 
myriad, kaleidoscopic response. So it is with 



242 The Events Man. 

the torpedo boats. Now you don't see them — 
now you do. One moment there is nothing 
under the horizon but that Hfeless ocean; the 
next the great bowl of water seethes with 
churning haste. They have been hiding around 
the promontory and among the islands, where, 
no one knows, each with a thin pole to the heav- 
ens, down which flashes the universal of the 
wireless. The moment a junk is spotted, upon 
her swoops the swarm of pickets. They come 
skating in across the glassy sea, four and five 
at a time ; sometimes a whole double flotilla. 

As the first breaks from cover there is hurled 
from some fore-funnel a burst of fluttering sig- 
nal flags. The instant they appear, the junk, 
like a wild thing caught in ambush, halts in her 
tracks, her sails come clattering to the decks, 
and she lies to, all a tremble. The first boat in 
tosses a dingy across and the white clad sailors 
climb aboard. You can see the Chinamen run- 
ning around like rats, the white clad boys open- 
ing the hatches. Protestations, quick, sharp 
answers. Another dingy pulls alongside. More 
sailors climb aboard. Half of them tumble be- 
low into the hold. The others wait above, and 
soon, from both hatches, there is pouring pro- 



Outcast. 243 

miscuously into the sea the dozen tons or more 
of cargo — leaden bags of rice, bolts of cloth, 
boxes of canned goods bearing Chicago and 
London labels, hogsheads of spirits marked 
"Urkhutsk," and "Manila/' Within a quarter 
of an hour the deed is done, and within half an 
hour, save for the lone and pillaged junk, the 
lifeless ocean again lies before us, calm, beau- 
tiful, without sail or smoke. 

The junkmen vainly strive to rescue a few 
floating boxes, and then crawl pitifully into 
Fawan Harbour to think it over. I send the 
laute aboard and he comes back with the same 
old tale of woe. They are good Chinamen, 
harmless merchants, who never meant any 
harm to anyone. All that contraband was 
never intended for the blockade. Those Chi- 
cago meats and London preserves were meant 
for the dirty heathen of Antung, who never 
heard of Chicago or London, and who would 
not know what to do with a tin can, even if they 
should ever see one. 

One day heavy smoke curling from Dalny- 
ward, announced the coming of a fleet, and I 
weighed to meet it. The vessels proved to be 
two second-class cruisers of the New Orleans 



244 The Events Man. 

type, carrying some six-inch guns, and some 
four-point-sevens. I sailed abeam their course, 
and lay broadside to. Presently their signals 
broke : 

"Who are you?" 

"A newspaper dispatch boat." 

"Have you any news ?" 

I was standing by the wheelhouse while 
Meyer passed me out the signal flags, and as I 
saw that my heart leaped, for here was a 
chance, so I flew the combination that read : 

"If you'll permit me, I'll come aboard." 

Soon a tiny bundle broke from the signal 
mast, and there flew to the wind a long white 
pennant, with a red ball in the centre, the uni- 
versal sea assent. 

Immediately I piled over her side, having 
put on a white collar for the occasion. She was 
nice and clean like a yacht. All the sailors were 
in white, romping about, squatting under the 
bulwarks and the deckhouse, under the heavy 
muzzles of the guns, anywhere to find shade, 
for the day was blistering. On the poop deck 
a group of officers were playing shuffleboard. 
Directly in front another group were at go. 
Everybody smiled, and there was a cordial re- 



Outcast. 245 

ception. I felt, were it not for the menace of 
those quiet turret pieces, that I could as well 
have intercepted a millionaire's outing trip in 
the Mediterranean. Yet in plain sight lay Port 
Arthur, forever alert, forever ready to burst at 
the touch. 

An officer led me to the bridge. Warships 
have so many bridges it is hard to tell which 
one you are on, but I soon saw this was the sig- 
nal bridge. It looked like the interior of a rail- 
way mail car, with rows of pigeon holes, and 
many patent mechanical devices. Six or eight 
halyards on pulleys led to the signal mast, and 
in the pigeon holes reposed, in neat bundles, the 
hundred or more flags that form the code. One 
man pulls the halyards, another snaps on the 
flags. The halyards taut, the flags break. 
Thus half a dozen signals can be flown in a few 
seconds. No merchanter could ever read with 
the lightning glance these practiced war vessels 
have. Less than a quarter of a minute is enough 
to show them an intricate dispatch, and from 
this vessel, which was evidently the flagship of 
an interior squadron, I could well see what mar- 
vellous efficiency in communication is gained, 
by the combined fleet, for a general action. Per- 



246 The Events Man. 

haps for ten seconds the flags remain up, then 
come fluttering to deck as the Stars and Stripes 
do at army posts in the States at sunset, drift- 
ing with the wind, a mass of color, one of the 
prettiest sights in all this hideous war drama. 
In a minute the Admiral can send to every ves- 
sel of his command, a long and complicated 
order. 

They led me to the bridge above, behind 
which the captain had a stateroom. He seemed 
restless when he saw me, chatted with his lieu- 
tenant a moment, then said, with elaborate 
courtesy: "We're on the blockade, and can't 
stop, but if you'd like to remain on board, I 
can signal your boat to follow us while we 
steam up the coast." 

Gladly I assented, and the signals spread al- 
most instantly. The Fawan picked up her heels 
and pattered after, and I suppose the boys 
thought "pinched again." They could not know 
where we were going. I felt the faintest throb 
from the engines, hid somewhere far below, and 
running as if in oil. What a change from the 
rasp of the Fawan! . Then the gentle lap, lap on 
the sides, and we were running abeam Port 
Arthur. 



Outcast. ^47 

"O, it's very dangerous over here," remarked 
the captain. 

"It is rather bad," I admitted. 

"Where do you go nights?" he asked. 

"I anchor behind one of the Miaotaou 
Islands." There was a rapid twinkle and a 
funny look in his eye. 

"Where?" 

"Give me a chart of the Straits of Pechili and 
I'll show you." An orderly produced the chart 
and I made a little cross. More jabbering ; more 
twinkling in Japanese. Then the lieutenant 
said: 

"The captain says very bad." 

"Why?" 

"The captain says Russians go there very 
often and lay mines. Our torpedo boats go 
there. They watch us and go out in the night 
to sink.'' It was a lie, because I had been there 
every night for six weeks and had never seen a 
torpedo boat near the island. 

"You must not go there any more," he con- 
tinued. "You must go right back to Chefoo." 
I thanked him for his advice and asked for 
news. 

"No news," said he. 



248 The Events Man. 

This was the usual false start, so, nothing 
daunted, I tried another tack. 

"Is it true," I asked, "that the Novik got out 
the other day?" 

"Yes — O, yes. The Novik is very brave. 
She came out with three torpedo boats and gave 
our ships a hard chase to the north." And he 
went on and told me all about it, the dashing, 
stern fight of the Russian cruiser, tke closing 
in of Togo's second fleet, the all but cornering 
of the plucky refugee from Port Arthur, her 
clever manoeuvre to return to harbour, her nar- 
row, almost miraculous escape. It was news, 
great news at the time, and he filled it in with 
plenty of gossip that formed an excellent cable. 
These officers think that news is only in the 
number of ships, and the calibre of guns. 

But that finished me with the Japanese navy. 
Never again was I allowed on even so much as 
a torpedo boat. The cruiser carried me an 
hour that day and then dropped me back into 
the Fawan, whereon I put straight for Chefoo. 

Two days later, lying again at anchorage in 
Fawan Haven, a torpedo boat called in and a 
nifty young subaltern boarded us with three 
sailors. It was his first trip on the blockade. 



Outcast. 249 

and he thought he was the most daring crea- 
ture that ever came down the sea wall. He was 
all puffed up with importance over his job, 
and he announced in firm chest tones that the 
danger was immense, that we must put back 
directly for Cheefo and never come to sea 
again. He looked as if he thought our teeth 
would chatter and our knees knock together 
like castanets, and seemed weary when we 
thanked him politely and said we guessed we 
would stay. 

He clambered down and ran out with his tor- 
pedo boat. You have doubtless seen a crawfish 
in water, when you put your hand out, run zip, 
zip, zip with its claws into the mud and draw 
hastily under a stone. That is how those blast- 
ed torpedo boats do when short hauled in a 
narrow bay, and the day I saw that one back 
from me, like a disgusted turtle into its shell, 
or like a crawfish into the mud, was my last 
really close view of the navy. 

The next day we found two mines, one with 
spikes, the regular kind, and one that the Jap- 
anese call "improvised," made of two iron cylin- 
ders bound together with wire. I fired repeated- 
ly at them with a Martini, but could not hit the 



250 The Events Man. 

spikes, when the skipper announced that three 
cruisers were on the horizon. 

"Put about/' said I, "and intercept them. 
We'll get the ships to put a three-pounder into 
the mines and sink them." 

As we ran up they changed their courses and 
headed toward Chef 00. I flew the signal: 
"Heave to, we have something important to 
communicate," and changed our course to in- 
tercept them. They changed their course. The 
Fawan again changed and flew another signal. 

"Have to report some mechanical mines." 

The only answer was a fourth change in the 
course, until they had shifted entirely around 
and were now coursing in the original direc- 
tion. We puffed along for some time, and at 
length gave it up. They were too fast for us. 

Plainly that story had traveled back, and 
Togo had made his orders distinct and final. 
We were to be avoided as a new camp avoids 
the pest. But we were bound to see a battle, 
and the Fawan would not quit until she had 
seen one. Gradually we had been frozen out 
of everything. First the Russians had finished 
us. The ports had closed. The mines had 
warned, the torpedoes had bullied, the cruisers 



Outcast. 251 

cajoled, the subalterns had lied and the chiefs 
had acquiesced. And now our only remaining 
friend, the Japanese navy, had turned its sphinx 
face. Fawan Haven was our last refuge. To 
that we would stick, despite everything, until 
the battle that was to be our excuse for being, 
was pulled off in those dazzling waters that 
stretched so solemnly and so grandly on every 
side. 



ONE MORE DESPERATE. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

A white man lost in the Yellow Sea climbs aboard 
for a drink and I see him off on his lonely, defiant 
way against the great fortress. — A junkful of Refu- 
gee Greeks brings the true story of Port Arthur, 
and, after recording a big scoop, I put hard about 
for battle. 

"White man have got aftside." 

It was the laute, poking his muscular face 
into the cabin where I sat reading on one end 
of the table, while the Chief and Perkis played 
dominoes across the other. They played there, 
month in and month out, the same way — the 
Chief always with his heavy face in his hands, 
the skipper, his elbows on the table, his arms 
crossed, gazing with intense concentration on 
the board. The laute had grown bold of late. 
This was because I had taken him often to 
overhaul junks and obtain news therefrom. He 
promptly caught the spirit of the occasion, 
copied dobtless from the freebooter spell cast 
over the Fawan by the last torpedo captain. 
He would run alongside the prospective haul 
bellowing like an angry bull, would board her 
with bluff omnipotence and act as though her 
fate lay entirely in his hands. Apparently he 



256 The Events Man. 

had not yet decided whether he would send her 
the next minute to the bottom or take her in 
summarily, a prize of war, to Chefoo. The 
startled Chinks, huddling about, with alacrity 
would obey his commands to rap off the hatches 
while he made a bluff of looking for contra- 
band. Then, having them secure in this fright- 
ened state, he would demand information on 
the peril of their lives. He certainly had rich 
crust. 

On this occasion I greeted his temerity with 
disfavor, and asked quietly, "Why speak lie? 
No white man can get into Fawan Haven." 

"No blong ploper," he muttered, with hurt 
dignity, somewhat crestfallen, then perked up, 
"Me no lie. White man have got," he insisted. 
"Chefooside have come — plenty big nose, long 
coat, Master come, look see." 

The least I could do was "look see," so I went 
aft. There the crew were excitedly jabbering 
about a figure which had climbed aboard, 
clothed in a long mackintosh and a soft felt hat. 
This was as strange an apparition as we had 
ever seen, after dark in those war waters, sixty 
miles from any friendly shore, in the midst of 
mines and deadly vessels prowling in constant 



One More Desperate. 257^ 

search of death. The figure advanced, and I 
could see the long English nose which the 
Chinaman's eye had first seized as the inevit- 
able European stigmata. The figure advanced. 

"Permit me to introduce myself," he said. 
''My name is Hector Fuller, and I represent the 
Indianapolis KfewsT Just as a reporter might 
"call at ah insurance office the morning after a 
fire. And here, in the Yellow Sea — at night ! 

"Yes," said I, thinking of nothing else to say, 
and shook his hand. "Em glad to see you. 
What are you doing here ?" 

"I've been moulting about Tokyo for three 
months, and got a pass to go with the Japanese 
army. That's all I got — a pass, nothing else. 
A pass is too slow for me. I knocked off on 
that, and I'm on my way now to call on Gen- 
eral Stoessel." 

"Stoessel!" I exclaimed, "why, he's in Port 
Arthur," just as if I were imparting valuable 
information. 

"I know," he replied, without visible concern. 
"That's where I'm going to find him." 

"But what's your plan?" said I. "You'll 
never get in." I might have omitted the gra- 
tuitous cold blanket, but I suppose ninety-nine 



258 The Events Man. 

men out of a hundred would have said the same 
thing, and I did not happen to be the hun- 
dredth. 

"Well, Fve got a junk out there, have been 
lying around five days now trying to poke in 
while the wind blew off shore. When the blow 
does get favorable I intend to drift in as far as 
possible, then swim for it if necessary. When I 
get there I suppose they'll pick me up for a spy 
or something. Then when they take me to 
Stoessel I'll present my card, and — well, there 
you are. I'll have my interview. I imagine 
he'll be glad to see someone from the outside 
world just now." 

"I admire your enterprise," I admitted, **but 
I think you'll get killed." 

''No," said he, with some precision, and puck- 
ering his brows into a critical intention. "I've 
been lying off here now, studying the whole 
thing out, for five days, and I'm willing to take 
the risks. I'm willing to stand any losses up 

to " he paused, as though weighing with 

the utmost care every chance for and against, 
then added, slowly, "the right leg." Again a 
pause, when he added quickly, "Below the 
knee." 



One More Desperate. 259 

''But you may find a sentry who will not be 
kind enough to shoot you below the knee," I 
ventured to volunteer in my killjoy prudence. 
"Sometimes bullets go higher/' 

But he seemed to think not, and I surveyed 
him with genuine admiration. This put me 
way in the shade. The Fawan was no longer 
the nub on the mushroom of America's fevered 
civilization. Here was a reckless devil willing 
to distance our ventures with audacity unmixed 
with fear or prudence. 

"Come in," said I, "you'd better sleep on the 
Fawan to-night," having the same solicitude 
one might feel for a criminal condemned to 
swing at dawn. Censure for the crime of ri- 
valry was past. He was but a fellow mortal, a 
frapped American mortal at that, thrust with- 
out sense or jollity into the froth of war's foam. 

"No, thank you," said he, "I must get away 
at two in the morning, when my men tell me 
the wind will change. I want the job over. I'm 
not particularly crazy about it myself." 

"How about chow?" I asked. 

"I've had a bit, such as it is," said he, then 
looked up with alacrity. "But have you got a 
drink?" 



26o The Events Man. 

"Come in," said I. Tansan brought out the 
whiskey, and presently some fried eggs, some 
fresh bacon, steaming coffee and a cold piece 
of pie. Then I looked him over. He was baked 
the color of a brick, had a week's stubble on his 
face, and altogether looked the desperate, hard- 
ened character he was. 

"How do you intend to get out?" I asked 
him. 

"I'm going to take a life preserver in with 
me," he answered, "and when they turn me 
loose ril drift out. Perhaps a junk or a Jap- 
anese warship will pick m_e up. That will be 
after my Stoessel interview." 

"The water's pretty cold up this way," I re- 
marked, yet I treated him with every courtesy 
and distinction, just as though he had been a 
man in his rational senses, gladly agreed to 
transmit a dispatch to his paper, a chit to his 
wife, and at last accepted his revolver as a part- 
ing present. He thought if he went in unarmed 
he stood a better chance of fair treatment. At 
two o'clock he climbed overboard and I thought 
I had seen the last of him. 

But the next morning he blew in again in a 
sampan. For five hours he had battled against 



One More Desperate. 261 

a head sea, unable to clear the harbor. We 
lounged about all that day and became rather 
well acquainted. Occasionally he displayed evi- 
dences of human affection and talked with 
veiled, unadmitted melancholy of Indiana and 
the Wabash. Late in the afternoon the Fawan 
weighed for Chefoo and we towed him out in 
front of Port Arthur, until he lay not more than 
fifteen miles away, with the Liaotishan light 
plain in the distance. There we bade him good- 
bye, and steamed off. I lowered the stars and 
stripes to half mast and blew three blasts on the 
whistle. As long as I could see him he stood in 
the stern sheets of the junk, waving his hat and 
a tiny American flag he carried. Then I went 
below to examine the revolver he had given me, 
and he said I could keep it if he were killed. 
It was a beauty — a big, single-action, forty- 
four cowboy Colt. 

Three days later a fisherman managed to 
convey to the laute that, running in close to 
Liaotishan one morning, he had seen a white 
man "with plenty big nose and long coat" sit- 
ting on a rock, smoking a black cigar. He had 
seen two Russian soldiers come up from behind, 
seize the strange man, and hurry him off. That 



262 The Events Man. 

was one of the Fawan's cigars. Another week 
I saw him on the streets of Chefoo, in silk tile, 
tall collar and a frock coat telling of his inter- 
view with Stoessel. Thus I lost my revolver. 
The foolkiller had been busy those days on the 
other side of the town where the Japanese bat- 
talions were trying to take impregnable posi- 
tions, without cover, by frontal assault — too 
busy to bother with Fuller. 

After that the days passed rapidly, relieved 
only by the periodic glint and gleam of torpedo 
attacks and the wayward drift of junks, until 
one bleak, grey morning when a sampan came 
from a neighboring island and managed to con- 
vey the information that some white people 
over there wanted to get to Chefoo. Could a 
whole gang of war correspondents be out 
laughing at the rules laid down by boards of 
strategy? I could think of no others reckless 
enough to be so far astray. I promised to go 
and the sampan promptly flew its kite. 

As we turned the corner we saw in the lee of 
the next island a junk flying a bedraggled flag, 
which presently proved to be that of Greece. 
There was a place near marked on the charts as 
drawing three feet, so we put to sea, whereas 



One More Desperate. 263 

the junk showed crazy signs of life. Men and 
women began running up and down the deck 
waving towels, blankets and stray articles of 
clothing, while they yelled wildly. It looked as 
if we were leaving them, but as the Fawan 
changed its course and bore down upon them 
the cries of despair changed to glad shouts of 
welcome, and as we hauled alongside a great 
cheer went up. It must have been heard as far 
away as Port Arthur. 

There were seven women, fifteen men and as 
many Chinamen crowded on a bit of junk hard- 
ly larger than a parlor bedroom. They had 
been adrift two days in wind and storm, buffet- 
ed in cold, without warm chow, and they well 
looked the part of castaways. Were the wo- 
men pretty? No woman is particularly at- 
tractive after she has been to sea for forty- 
eight hours in an open boat till her hair is down 
and her clothes cling to her as if moulded on. 
Besides, there were of middle-age, and of ad- 
vanced age, all but one. She said she was the 
wife of a Russian officer. Someone said after- 
ward, when she was living openly at the Astor 
House, that she was not his wife. However 
that may be, she may have been pretty or not, 



264 The Events Man. 

for all I noticed. Here was news — big news, 
for what else could they be than refugees, of 
which, since the siege began, we had yet had 
none? 

''Will you take us to Chef 00?" asked the 
spokesman, whom I promptly let aboard. He 
was a civil engineer, had helped on the forts 
and spoke English well. 

I agreed to take all of the Europeans, but 
none of the Chinamen, if, in exchange, they 
would tell me all they knew of conditions inside 
the fortress. Only too happy, they consented, 
and I packed them away in the Fawan and or- 
dered Perkis to clear straight for Chefoo. 

A storm was already brewing, and before we 
got fairly under way it broke — one of the worst 
storms we ever had. The spray danced to the 
top of the wheelhouse, and the screw cleared 
the stern. But Perkis shoved her through. He 
never balked at any sea danger. That he re- 
garded as his ''pidgin," and, while it ruffled me 
worse than the mines or the guns or the tor- 
pedoes, he seemed never to mind, but bucked 
on through everything. The sorry passengers 
went utterly to the bad and declared they had 
never been so sick in their lives. I turned over 



One More Desperate. 265 

the cabins to the women, packed some of 
the men in the hold, one in the wheel house, two 
m the main saloon, and when I had disposed of 
all the space two were compelled to crawl on 
top of the baggage in the bathroom where they 
lay, deathly ill, like cadavers on ice. 

Meanwhile, the news ! I sat tight in the main 
saloon, clearing the end of the table, and 
brought the civil engineer opposite, while in 
turn he conducted before me each member of 
the party who could throw light on the situa- 
tion. One was a merchant who had sold goods 
to the various regimental messes, and he knew 
almost, within a ton, the delicacies held in 
the city. Another had been a warehouse clerk, 
and he gauged the flour, meat and hardtack. 
The civil engineer knew very closely the num- 
ber of guns — 750 — and their disposal on the 
various fortifications. Some of the women had 
been nursing in the hospitals and knew the ex- 
tent of the sanitary arrangements and the ca- 
pacity for wounded, as well as the number of 
incapacitated. From the others drifted in gos- 
sip of the feeling among the men and of the 
jealousy among the officers. To cap all, was 
a boy of fifteen, the proper age for the ripest 



266 The Events Man. 

and keenest sleuth. He had scampered all over 
town, without suspicion or let, and he could tell 
me the names of every regiment. From all of 
these we got a report that the next day appeared 
in eight different languages in every capital of 
the world, and three days later brought an in- 
quiry direct through the Japanese consul from 
the authorities in Tokyo. They wanted to 
know how and where I picked it up. It was the 
first accurate, complete story since the seige 
began, nearly five months before. 

But to land it was the problem. I knew that 
if we let those hungry, voluble Greeks loose in 
Chefoo before my cable was on the streets of 
Chicago every hotel correspondent in the place 
would pump them as dry as I had. 

"Look here," said I to Perkis, in the extrem- 
ity of fear at this situation. ''You tie up under 
the bluff and wait till morning. Then drift 
across to the anchorage about seven o'clock, 
and don't let a single soul on or off this boat un- 
til I come on again. Lie close or the customs 
office will see you and pull out for papers." 

So there I left him, five miles from town, and 
took with me four trusties in the cutter around 
to a little black wharf I knew of, hid in a jumble 



One More Desperate. 267 

of Chinese shipping in the native part of the 
city. So far as I can make out Perkis walked 
the deck all night with a revolver, ready to re- 
pel boarders should any show themselves. I 
gave my boys comeshaw money in big lumps, 
and left them strict orders to say nothing of 
refugees. Then, with my precious dispatch un- 
der my shirt, I sought the cable office, which I 
entered at sundown. 

The next morning we bundled the Greeks 
out, disgruntled at the delay and yet happy with 
the free ride in quick time. In less than an 
hour we weighed again. With the gossip the 
Greeks had left was one item of impending im- 
portance. 

Great jealousy, they said, existed at Port 
Arthur between army and navy. The soldiers 
on the ramparts were continually taunting the 
sailors for their fear of meeting the Japanese 
whose fleet all could see, now and then, on the 
horizon. Once or twice the Novik, whose offi- 
cers could not stand the sting of the taunt, had 
ventured out and had returned to the rich ap- 
plause of the soldiers and the civilians. At 
length the lethargy of the entire fleet had been 
permeated, and when they left, the Greeks had 



26S The Events Man. 

told me, the navy was but waiting for a favor- 
able day to emerge, and at length give final bat- 
tle to their enemies who for five months had 
held them effectually bottled. But since the 
Greeks had gone there had been only bad 
weather, and I knew from the absence of sounds 
that no shooting of extent to presage a battle 
had yet occurred. We that day seemed in the 
tail of the storm, and as I told Perkis what the 
Greeks had said and the reason for great hurry 
in our return to the Haven, he said: 

"Yes, the backbone of this blow is broken. 
To-morrow will be clear." 

"Then it's battle," said I, "at last a battle!" 



A BATTLE AT SEA. 



CHAPTER XV. 

Gladly adventuring forth for new sights we come 
upon the greatest of all — battle. The revelation of 
reality that lay therein. A modern sea fight, one 
hundred and thirty years after John Paul Jones. 

"The invitation of the road !" Who has yet 
proclaimed that call? Stevenson laments that 
one of sufficient power and promise has not 
arisen; Kipling echoes; Whitman replies in 
basso profundo, "who travels with me will seize 
new prizes never yet disclosed — the earth, rude, 
silent, incomprehensible at first, but keep on! 
Be well assured he traveling with me will win 
newer, grander, rougher prizes/' Thus these 
singers hint and frolic, chanting the song of 
the open road. 

What would I not give were I poet who could 
properly chant the song of the open sea — the 
open sea, whereon glide battle fleets! When 
the dawn wind blows on the fresh ripples, when 
the night breeze flips up the new white caps and 
feathers a wee nest with anguish, when the 
wake climbs through the hawser holes and 
lights flick out of the gloom — all these and 
more than these give prop and scenic brush a 



2J2 The Events Man. 

lavish say. Then it is good to start forth of a 
morning and look upon a new sea, for you 
know that the day will bring a hundred fresh 
impressions, and perhaps — perhaps, if luck 
blows slow and cool — a story. As the first 
sight of the foe to the fighting man, as the pink 
of conditioned flesh to the pugilist, as the scent 
of a raw October marsh to a duck hunter, even 
so is the light of a new day on a battle-field to 
the modern writer of cable news. 

Something of this delight and yearning, but 
yet rough-stamped with the vernacular, I con- 
fided to Perkis as we boomed for the Haven 
that bright, auspicious morning. He cast to- 
ward me a glance of the tender, confiding pity 
held by a man-eater toward some herb-fed cub. 

*Tt's precious little you'll see," said he, never 
so much as glancing from chart and binnacle 
which lay before him. Navigator, thought I, 
with scant goodwill, no man of mere trade can 
rise above his calling. Yet with concealed 
smile I conciliatingly replied: 

"But a battle — we must see something if 
there's a battle ! Three miles away we can get 
the whole action.'' 

"You think so," said he, calmly, with a quiz- 



A Battle at Sea. 273 

zical lifting of his eyes. "I saw the battle of 
the Yalu, was in it, in fact — on a converted 
merchanter — and from the bridge, too. We 
held off a-ways, a sort of stake boat; you 
couldn't ask for a better box seat than that for 
any show. Well, what did I see?'' He asked 
the question savagely. I was coming now to 
the rock of his buck the day of the strike. 

"Well," said I, eagerly. "What did you 
see?" 

He looked me over nonchalantly, then turned 
to the tarpaulin lookout, over which there now 
stretched a pink awning to keep out the flash 
of midday. There he leaned upon his folded 
arms and calmly gazed out over the sea whose 
China ochre was fast fading to Liaotung blue. 
Then he replied : 

"Ships." 

I waited long for further report. There was 
none. 

"Yes, yes," said I, at length, with petulance. 
"And what else?" 

"Nothing." 

"Nothing ! There must have been smoke — 
or something. How near were you?" 

"Three miles. Yes, there was a bit of 



274 The Events Man. 

smoke," he continued with absurd slowness. 
"A bit of smoke that flew about lazy like a lot 
of Chinks without a laute." 

"Then there must have been firing. So, you 
did see something." 

"Hearing ain't seeing. Yes. There were 
some explosions, a sort of target practice, and 
bum target practice, at that." 

"But manoeuvres? Could you tell how the 
ships were going?" 

"O, rot!" He turned on me savagely and 
I could not but feel a glow of triumph. For 
the first time I had touched the spark of anger 
in the calm Perkis. Here was to be revealed 
the secret of that scarcely defined, yet ever felt, 
disdain which he had shown for me from the 
first, disdain strangely mixed with derision, 
derision strangely bred of fatherly affection. 
Through him now, as he spoke, I caught stray 
glimpses of the derelict Englishman, heir 
through past generations to university train- 
ing, but to whom has spoken once and forever 
that wild call of the sea. 

"You writer chaps make me tired with your 
talk of battles." He had turned now, was fac- 
ing me as he leaned against the tarpaulin while 



A Battle at Sea. 275 

the slant afternoon sun beat through the pink 
and dyed his rugged beard with the ghostly 
half-shade of a tropical sunset. "From his- 
torian to reporter you are all the same. The 
admiral writing his report from the cabin of 
the flagship is no better than a dispatch boat 
racing with its scoop. All alike, you project 
what never has been, and tell what never hap- 
pened. So long as you stick to the truth on 
one point — the number of ships sunk — you can 
tell all the lies you want, the more and better 
told the greater the admiral, the more notorious 
the reporter. Do you want to know how a sea 
battle really is fought?" 

He must have been assured of my interest 
by this time. Nothing less than Togo himself 
could have distracted me. 

"It's like a Tipperary scrap, catch-as-catch- 
can,'' said he. "With one difference. You see 
the scrap, you don't see the battle. And if you 
can't tell how a catch-as-catch-can is won, who 
will ever tell how a sea battle is won? You 
know in a single way, and I can tell it to you 
now as well as any writer of pedigree will, in 
smart phrases and proper books, after the show 
is done. The best man wins. That's all there 



276 The Events Man. 

is to it. Manoeuvres, artillery, practice, and 
all such are like the buttons on a coat, orna- 
mental, a wee bit useful, but not necessary. 
The nifty boy with guts gets there. The Jap 
is that, for he's born to the sea. This Russian 
navy is nothing but a parade ground for cow- 
herders wearing sea boots. It's got no more 
chance to win than I'd have at your trade, and 
me knowing nothing more about a pen than the 
reputation books give it. Manoeuvres! There 
are no manoeuvres and if there was, who'd see 
them — butting, groining, back-heeling, simply 
a Tipperary scrap pulled ofif in a dungeon. It's 
a crazy game — war !" 

He turned back and looked out upon the sea 
and I asked him no more questions. 

Liaotishan was off the port quarter some 
twenty-five miles now. The sea lay like a city 
park pond a mid-week afternoon, troubled by 
an only sight-seer. It was three o'clock, when 
I caught smoke on the horizon off the star- 
board quarter and at the same moment heard 
distant sounds of firing, a sound such as floats 
across a late meadow from the floor where a 
flail is beating with rhythmic dull chop. 



A Battle at Sea. t.'jj 

"By Jove, they're out !'' I exclaimed. Let's 
get to the south, outside of it." 

Perkis grudgingly obeyed. 

"It's taken them longer than they expected," 
I remarked, Perkis seemed little interested, 
but I continued. "The engineer said they were 
boasting around town they would saunter out 
some morning for a jaunt in the offing and be 
back before tiffin, bringing Togo with them." 

"When Togo tiffins in Port Arthur it will be 
with Nogi," said Perkis. Then he had time to 
say nothing more, nor had I time, for the whole 
show was drifting our way. 

This is what he saw : — a sea untroubled, daz- 
zling as fresh paint; a tender blue sky serene 
with the bland smile of an infant; a haze of 
sweeping littoral as unimpressed now before 
the whirr of steel-skinned monsters as centuries 
agone when confronted by the bellying bluff 
of cumbrous war- junks ; in the vast offing, per- 
haps seven miles apart, the growing smudge of 
two parallel smoke bursts. 

"We'd better straight for the Haven," said I. 

Even as we ran for it the parallel lines tacked 
again and made in for the Harbour V, and as 
they rode without dismay, without haste, there 



278 The Events Man. 

broke at fascinatingly regular intervals across 
the miles of deep that steady lilt of the flail. 

The race was now athwart our bows, per- 
haps a dozen miles off. True, all too true, 
as Perkis had said, there was nothing but ships. 
Do you remark it strange if you see ships when 
you are at sea ? Yes, only ships, and a cirrous 
froth close to the water's edge that might be 
cannon smoke. That was all, save for the 
monotonous and not unmusical beat of the flail. 
And yet we were looking upon that for the see- 
ing of which I would, like Fuller, have bar- 
tered a leg-below the knee. It was a naval 
battle. 

"So this is what the engineer says the army 
has driven the navy to," I remarked to Perkis 
as we dropped anchor in the Haven. "A try at 
the blockade. It's not worth the price of a 
gallery seat, and here we've bought up the 
house." 

"There are not many shows worth the price 
of a gallery seat," said Perkis, and added, 
" 'specially after the last curtain." 

He knocked off and stumbled down to his 
cabin, muttering, "A Tipperary scrap, below 
stairs." 



A Battle at Sea. 279 

I went through the cave and sat in front of 
the diffs. It was getting along towards sun- 
down. The Japanese fleet had lain to well out 
on a line about even with that usually held 
by the patrol boat for a beat. The Russian 
fleet was slowly rounding to, under the forts. 
Scarlet and gold dyed the hills above and the 
foremost boats had disappeared under the black 
shadows already made by the cliffs. The pan- 
orama was without sound. 

As long as light could tell anything to my 
binoculars I stayed there commanding the har- 
bor mouth, fully expecting to see the Russian 
ships disappear, one by one, in the V, for it was 
only there that anything could be detected. 
Under the cliffs all was dark. In the V alone 
light showed. The last ray disappeared and 
still the V was uncut by funnel track or lift of 
smoke. I sought the Fawan and dinner. 

"There'll be doings to-night," said I. "The 
silly fleet has stuck itself down under the forts." 

"What !" exclaimed Perkis. I explained. 

"It'll be worse than a battle, then," said he, 
"for them." 

I needed no interpretation to know what he 
meant by "them." The engineer had told us 



28o The Events Man. 

the sailors had sworn they would not return to 
Port Arthur without Togo and the officers ap- 
parently dared not take them back to town to 
face the jeers of the army. 

"It's playing straight into Jap hands/' said 
Perkis, and as he spoke there blew over the 
cliffs a hellish roar. I rushed on deck, Perkis 
following. To my urgent entreaties he grudg- 
ingly weighed anchor and we stood around the 
corner. 

It was a steady, frightful sound in which all 
individual discharge was lost. Not one, not a 
dozen ships, even in simultaneous broadside 
could have effected that. It could have been 
no less than all the fleet and all the forts in 
constant action. There was a continual roar, 
like the pulsating vibration of thunder, for 
from fifteen to twenty-five minutes. Then 
silence of a few minutes. Then roll, on heavy 
deep roll, again. So on, hour after hour, with- 
out cessation, without diminution, until the 
heave of the sea rumbled out in spiral lifts, as 
ether waves to the sensuous diapason of a pipe 
organ. At last the mighty fortress was telling 
the stuff of which she was formed. No longer 
defiance ! Angry battle leaped from her ram- 



A Battle at Sea. 281 

parts now. But could Togo have the audacity 
to run in for direct attack? We could not an- 
swer. 

Meanwhile the search lights played us a 
game of hideous glory. It was the worst 
night possible for attack, because the moon 
showed out almost at the full. Added from 
Golden Hill, the Tiger's Tail, the Lion's Mane 
came incandescent bursts, less universal, but 
more to the point. They leaped, caracoled, 
hesitated, paused, stopped, ricocheted, dashed 
into the heavens and disappeared like a lost 
star, dropped into the sea and out of sight like 
a ball of burning pitch. Thus, in parallel lines, 
again criss-crossing, again in colossal commo- 
tion what seemed a battalion of cyclopean eyes 
gave proof of the agony with which the dark 
monster writhed. 

When the fort lights played on the scene of 
battle directly below, the angle of objective be- 
came so obtuse that the hoods lapped over and 
hid from us the weird, gnomish brilliance, but 
of the lights from the turret tops of the battle- 
ships we never lost sight. On our line of 
vision direct they sometimes pierced even our 
far haven, again plowed with ghastly ray the 



282 The Events Man. 

very torpedo nets that hung about their water 
lines, but ever we caught their dart of vigil- 
ance. This kept up for hours. 

Soon after two o'clock in the morning the 
din grew louder, if that were possible. The 
cliff lights beat a more fantastic dance and 
slowly we saw the lights of the battleships, 
inextricably mixed, move toward what ought 
to have been the direction of the V. By 
three most of the firing had died down, all ex- 
cept very faint pops that we knew to be mus- 
ketry or machine guns. Poor devils who had 
escaped wreck were being potted by the walk 
guards as they climbed desperate and shiver- 
ing upon the rocks. The Greek engineer had 
seen this in the first torpedo attack and im- 
potently felt the horror of the new crime as its 
faint bark drifted our way. 

Togo the next day reported that the Rus- 
sians had lost four warships, one of the Peres- 
viet type, one like the Sevastopol and two like 
the Diana. His own loss, he said, was noth- 
ing. If noise counts for destruction, then it 
could be believed, but — we waited. 

Another day passed and then we picked up a 
jtink and found the only thing Perkis said 



A Battle at Sea. 283 

ever came out of a sea fight sure, — the number 
of ships sunk. The Sevastopol alone was in- 
jured. Even she came out right in a few days. 

The silly thing was done by the Russians, as 
Perkis predicted. Instead of taking the tor- 
pedo boats, one by one, as they came in, the en- 
tire fleet shot with one discharge at all the at- 
tackers. The effect was that which a man finds 
hunting ducks when he aims promiscuously at 
a flock over his head and discharges both bar- 
rels. He may get some: the chances are he 
will get none. When he picks out one duck and 
lets one barrel after another go for it — well, 
that was what the Russians did not do on that 
night of the twenty-third of June. 

Then we went hotfoot for Chefoo, with the 
news straight, but as for seeing — pshaw! 

"No foreigners will ever see anything of a 
naval battle,'' I remarked on the bridge as the 
dawn wind searched us out rounding the big 
bluff to our anchorage. 

Perkis looked on me with a comprehensive 
leer and said : 

"I told you so." 



SOLD OUT, 



CHAPTER XVI. 

Mistaking a merchant boat for the Fawan, the 
Russians sink it, while the Japanese buy our precious 
dispatch boat from under our feet — cornered at last 
— farewell, and off to join Nogo. 

Still, in Spite of cynical Perkis, in spite of the 
very apparent difficulties, I should have staid 
on for the smashing of the Russian fleet on the 
tenth of August, even for Togo's overwhelm- 
ing victory the next year, were it not — well, 
there is little left to tell. 

Ten days later the Hipsang, a merchanter 
from Newchwang to Chefoo in bean-oil and 
general, was signaled to stop one dark night off 
Liaotishan by a Russian destroyer. She tried 
to, reversed her engines and was fast rounding 
to, when a torpedo was inserted under her left 
side and she went down in three minutes. You 
cannot stop a 1200-ton boat in her own length. 
Eight men were drowned. The rest were 
picked up by the destroyer, taken to Port 
Arthur, jailed, scurvily treated, and after two 
weeks turned adrift in a junk, without chow. 
While in prison, a Russian officer told the mate 
that the Hipsang had been sunk because the 



288 The Events Man. 

destroyer supposed her to be: "That damned 
newspaper dispatch boat." 

We had up to then been hugging the Haven 
close at night, but now even in the daytime, 
Perkis objected to going too near Port Arthur. 
So we never ventured so close that we could 
not, if necessity in the shape of destroyers, 
should drive us back, make Fa wan Haven in 
the territorial waters of China before even the 
fastest boat could get within range. This per- 
mitted us within fifteen miles of the V, close 
enough to detect all important movements. 

The cruise following our information about 
the Hipsang, I was lying in my berth one morn- 
ing, about to get up, when the boat came to 
with a sudden jerk, and I leaped to the deck in 
my pajamas. The crew stood away with that 
pitying respect shown by the crowd at a street 
accident when the word passes that the father 
has arrived. All made way for me as I has- 
tened to the bridge. To my cry of inquiry Per- 
kie could only point some twenty paces to port. 

It was a mine. 

"The trouble is," said Perkis, ''not so much 
that it's a mine, but that none of us saw it in 
broad daylight. I have two men on constant 



Sold Out. 289 

lookout in the bows, and there were three of us 
on the bridge with eyes wide open. Not one of 
us saw it, and we shaved it about three yards to 
port." 

"Who did find it?" I asked. 

''Cromarty." 

I looked below. There in the engine-room 
door stood the Chief, with a superior "I- 
told-you-so" smile on his lean face. 

"It proves," said Perkis, "that we are never 
safe and never will be safe in these waters." 

As we docked at Chefoo after that cruise, I 
was handed a telegram from the Taku Tug and 
Lighter Company, who owned the boat. 

"Must demand release of Fawan at expira- 
tion of charter," it read. 

I hurried to Taku. It was too true. The 
Russians had not been able to sink us, the Jap- 
anese navy had been unable with lies and 
threats to scare us out, but the Japanese gov- 
ernment had bought us out. The Fawan had 
been sold for use in the Sasebo docks. My 
charter expired in two weeks, and I must make 
up my mind to a farewell to my gallant friend 
and servant. 

On the next to the last cruise I thought it all 



290 The Events Man. 

out. Perhaps it was well to stop. Already the 
Fawan had stayed out her last rival in the Great 
Game by two months. For four months she 
had been the newspaper talk of Europe and 
America. Her dispatches had influenced the 
stock markets of the whole world, she had been 
the concern of three governments, had aroused 
the antagonism of two great navies, had sur- 
vived more perils and seen more dangers than 
na ynon-combatant in the war. I loved her for 
the enemies she had made. But I loved her, 
too, for what she had seen — storm, battle, hid- 
den might, revealed strength, sea-glory and 
sea-hell. She had made thirty-three cruises 
and had covered distance that, lain like a tape 
along ocean paths, could have taken her half- 
way around the globe — a petty tugboat just like 
those that saucily ply the dirty silt of the Chi- 
cago river. Perhaps it was time to stop. 

But no — that was not the game. According- 
ly I wired to Chicago that I wanted to charter 
a new boat, that I already had an option on 
three and that we could again be in commission 
in a week. It was to be the great battle or bust. 
I don't know what we would have done for a 
crew, still — 



Sold Out. 291 

"Release Fawan" the wire came in reply. 
"Do not think it advisable to charter new boat. 
Risk does not warrant further enterprise. 
Proceed to Tokyo, thence Manchuria, join 
Nogi Port Arthur." 

That settled it. No more water in mine. 
Week after week, as we had sailed down the 
Liaotung I could hear them — pounding, pound- 
ing at the land defenses. And week after week 
as we returned the sounds came nearer, nearer 
— at first twenty miles up the peninsula, then 
eighteen, fifteen, twelve, and now, the last cruise 
out, but twelve miles from the V of the har- 
bour's mouth I had heard the clatter, clatter of 
Nogi's maxims and the sullen reply of the land 
forts. 

I told Perkis and the Chief and they told the 
crew. Gladness smote me with welcome eye 
the first time I appeared on deck. Though all 
were on double pay and it meant the end of a fat 
job none felt the loss. My message was more 
than a reprieve. It meant release from the 
death sentence. 

My agent at Chef 00 urged that I cut the last 
cruise. There was nothing to get, he said, and 
it was folly to tempt fate at the very brink of 



202 The Events Man. 

safety. The dangers were greater than ever 
and the gain to be had less. Why not go right 
down to Taku and finish the job then and there 
' — a bad job at best. 

We put to sea for the last time. The next 
morning the agent was awakened by the hotel 
proprietor. 

"Have you heard the bad news?" said he, 
"that Fawan was blown up last night and no 
one escaped ?" 

"I don't believe it," said he, and waited. 

Then the vulture correspondents gathered. 
The rumor of our destruction had spread and 
they wanted first blood. A fisherman had seen 
us go down ofif Liaotishan light. The cables 
became promptly busy. The capitals and the 
powers knew it that day. Editorials were pub- 
lished headedj "Audacity and Folly." Con- 
dolences went to the family. The News was 
about to make a claim on the Russian govern- 
ment for indemnity. 

That afternoon I appeared on the streets of 
Chefoo, my career as a sailor ended. I met a 
correspondent. He looked at me crestfallen 
and startled. 



Sold Out. 293 

"I thought the Fawan was blown up," said 
he, with visible disappointment. 

"No,'' I replied, hurrying to the hotel. There 
I learned the idle rumor. How hard on my 
colleagues — hard as it must be on you, reader — 
that I can give you only anti-climax to the 
story. 

We crossed the Taku bar at eight the follow- 
ing morning. A tug hurried off, overhauled us 
and passed me a telegram. 

"Thank the officers and men of the Fawan 
for faithful service and advance them half a 
month's pay." It was from my editor. 

I called Perkis and Cromarty to the cabin, 
where the checks were made out. I explained 
that money was nothing for what they had 
done, that I wanted to give them a gold watch 
or something by which they could always re- 
member our four dashing months, but that they 
could buy a bit of a reminder with this filthy 
lucre. The Chief snuffled and the skipper 
turned away his head. They took the checks. 
It was a very affecting scene. 

Usually when you go on a ship you think of 
anything but the starting of it. For all you 
know it may be superhuman power that sets it 



294 The Events Man. 

going. But to have a whole steamboat wait on 
your word, just as might a horse, or a wheel- 
barrow or a bicycle — well, that's what I had 
for four months, and it was hard to quit. 

As we docked at Tongku where I was to take 
the train for Pekin at noon, a crowd showed up 
on the pier. As I came on deck a string of fire- 
crackers about as long as the Fawan began to 
explode, and as I walked off the gangplank 
they kept on exploding. As I trudged off down 
the pier they were still exploding. I wanted 
Perkis and Cromarty to walk with me, but they 
insisted on falling in behind. So I went alone 
into that crowd deafened by that noise, feeling 
a proper two-spot. I fear that when I said 
goodbye to the skipper and the old Chief I 
failed to see them. There was something in my 
eyes. 

Then I started for Japan, and the Third 
Army, Nogi, and Port Arthur, where I could 
hear something and see something on that field 
which nearly all but four months of my life I 
had called home — dry land. 



FINIS. 



Other Works by the same author 

PORT ARTHUR: 

A Monster Heroism 

" He has added to the literature of the famous 
siege a human document so strong in its lines 
as to give the reader a biograph presentation 
of the scenes with a graphophone accompani- 
ment. One might even go further and almost 
imagine that he himself was a witness of all 
the thrilling incidents of the struggle." 

— Boston Herald. 
With 16 Battlefield Snapshots in Double Tone 
$1.50 Net 



SANDY FROM THE SIERRAS 

"Red-blooded fiction .... an unusual 

story A fine combination of constant 

action and splendid character drawing." 

— St. Louis Globe-Democrat. 
Illustrated by A. de Ford Pitney 
16mo, $1.50 

MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY 

NEW YORK 



APR 9 1907 



